Thursday, February 17, 2022
Count me among the hundreds of his boys feeling this loss and sending love your way, Phyllis. I second what my brothers have posted. I was also thinking about a decade-old letter, written after dozens of us started an educational savings award in Doug's name.
Here is an excerpt from that 2011 letter:
It’s fascinating to watch the transformations of young men that occur at Camp Sankaty. It’s even more fascinating to note what hasn’t changed over the decades. Ask any alumnus, be he 23 or 63, why he originally came to Camp Sankaty and the answer will almost certainly be “to make money” or “for that weekly day off at the beach.”
Next ask him what he got out of Camp. Interestingly, these answers will depart from the original reason for coming yet be nearly as consistent. You’ll hear “work ethic,” “leadership skills,” “integrity,” “financial responsibility,” “the importance of owning up to mistakes and learning from them,” “work ethic,” “leadership skills,” “integrity,” over and over and over.
The former camper may be a small business owner or a police officer, a construction worker or a teacher. He may work at the White House or in a hotel, in finance or international development, in academia or the military. He may be a husband, a father, or a youth sports coach. Yet wherever he is today, he’ll say that the skills and values he draws upon came from Camp Sankaty – not the physical place but a personal interaction that happened there, a formative experience. And more often than not, the person behind that interaction is the same: Doug Ellsworth.
As late 1980s camper Bard Woltman says, “I learned that there are special people who know that building young men with character is one way to change the world. I am of course speaking about Douglas Ellsworth. While we talk rarely, he is often in my thoughts. His guiding words to me decades ago still echo in my mind as though they were spoken just yesterday. When I am faced with a dilemma either in my business or personal affairs I still hear his carefully chosen words spoken to me with a strong hand on my shoulder.”
“Change the world” may sound like hyperbole, but when you hear guys in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s all crediting Doug for instilling an impressive slate of skills and values, you can’t help but wonder: what is Doug’s magic? What separates him from all the other potential mentors these kids encountered in their formative years?
Three qualities leap out as possible secrets to Doug’s success: 1) an amazing ability to relate across generations and earn respect, 2) a complete lack of ego and unwavering focus on building something larger than oneself, and 3) a willingness to take personal risk for the benefit of Camp’s mission.
On the first count, I don’t even know a 30-year-old who can get teenagers to open up about their concerns and challenges the way this septuagenarian has for half a century. He doesn’t pretend to like their music. He hasn’t updated his clothing style or dance moves in decades. Yet he connects. Perhaps it’s the fact that he learns and remembers things about each of them, that his genuine interest and concern for their goals is unmistakable, that he declines any obligatory imposed reverence (ask a first-year camper who tried to call him “Mr. Ellsworth”), or that he welcomes any ribbing that comes his way.
Whatever it is, the walls of adolescent cockiness come down and the opportunity for genuine learning and growth goes up.
On the second, Doug operates from a central organizing principle in which he continually asks “What will be best for the kids? What will make camp stronger?” and the answer trumps all else. The behavior is rare in our day and age, but it is contagious.
Current caddymaster Connor Holmes spoke for scores of us when he piped up at this August’s banquet. Connor said that he couldn’t understand at the end of his first summer why all the older guys were getting so emotional. After all, it was just a summer job. A few years later he realized it was anything but. He saw how his camp experiences and values had become integral to who he was as a person. He felt the strength of the brotherly bonds.
Connor’s epiphany, much like the one that hit me and many others, is both humbling and empowering. You realize that your behavior and your choices result not only in benefits or liabilities for yourself, but also serve to either strengthen or weaken a rich institution. You understand that your personal steps will either expand or contract the opportunities that will be afforded to those who follow in your footsteps.
Our nation and our world need more people who grasp this way of thinking.
The third quality is really an extension of the second. In business, one must take risks to maximize rewards. The same holds true in Doug’s world of youth development. Here I speak from personal experience. My third year at camp, I broke a camp rule and was kicked out of camp. The safe move would have been to keep me out for good. For a director to do otherwise would mean putting himself on the line for any repeat infraction.
Yet Doug did otherwise – staying in communication with me, setting conditions, and then accepting me back the following summer – and I like to think that I made his bet pay off. I was honor circle the following two summers, on staff the two after that, and gave all I had to serve as a positive mentor for the younger campers and to help leave Camp Sankaty stronger than we found it.
Let’s be clear that Doug’s decision was calculated, not a wild bet. He knew from decades of experience that kids can learn as much from failure as from success and that, for those who buy into the system, the desire to repay what one is given can be a powerful motivator.
The Camp Sankaty ship is fortunate to have Doug as its ballast.
-Seán Sheehan (Camp Sankaty ’89-’95)
