Listen to this article
The Salvation Army provides camps to kids across the country at heavily subsidized rates, often to the point of being no-cost. For many of the kids, it’s their first time experiencing the great outdoors.
Ed Covert has been a camp director for the last 37 years, until his recent retirement.
In this piece, Ed looks back on a lifetime of work with teens and young adults, and what it means to be able to introduce them to the beauty of nature and the love of God.
Whether you’re a teen, curious about attending a summer camp, or an adult, reminiscing about your childhood summers, or even learning about camp for the first time, this video is for you.
Below is a transcript of the video edited for readability.
Ed Covert: This is the place where it all started for me.
In 1968 or ’69, I was a camper here for the first time. It was just a magical place. There’s something that just stirred a sense of wonder, that grabbed ahold of my curiosity, my imagination.
You know, I could not wait every summer to get back to camp.
My parents, grandparents, great-grandparents on my mom’s side, were all officers. So camp has always been a part of our family’s journey.
As I went through college and worked at camp in the summer and thought, this is a pretty sweet gig, Walt Cisar, who was the director here, said, “Well, why don’t you come and work full time?”
Walt and I worked a couple years together, and he said, “I’m ready to retire,” and tossed the keys to me at 25. That was a crazy, crazy decision.
It was an incredible journey just trying to figure out, “What have I really gotten myself into? How do I learn to lead?” And all the bits and pieces that have to come together. You just realize, okay, “Lord, I’m going to entrust this to you.”
I’d been here about five years and was invited up to the Northwest to work at Camp Arnold.
There was also in that whole mix a young lady, now, who’s my wife, Marianne, that lived in the Northwest. So the chance to go up and pursue this relationship was a pretty magical confluence of two life events. So Marianne, the love of my life, has been the anchor and the support for all of this journey.
The mission of camp is to create disciples. For kids to come to camp and begin to differentiate their faith, to know that there’s something about following Jesus today that helps me to be a kinder person, to be a more loving person.
So as we send them back home, they’re singing the camp songs and they’re telling stories about new friends that they’ve met and how they were able to finally hit the bullseye at the archery range. But in the end, we hope that that high is rooted and founded in a deepened love for God.
That’s the power of camp. There’s not a single other leadership development experience for the campers, and even more importantly, for the staff, like camp. It’s the best incubator that the Army has.
I worked five years at Mount Crag’s, 15 years at Camp Arnold, and 17 years at Redwood Glen. But I always wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t matter what camp, whether it was here or Arnold or Redwood Glen, when you came back on the property, there would always be a sense of, “Oh, yeah, this is my place. This is where God met me.”
Because as folks come and gather in these sacred places, God’s work is imprinted in your heart in the shade of an oak tree, or the breeze that stirs through that space, the sound of the creek running by, and the laughter and the songs flowing up from the campfire pit.
That would all point them back to a God who loved them so deeply and cared for them so richly that He would set a place apart…like this.
That was my life’s work, to be able to create the conditions for kids and staff that their senses would fully come awake to all that God had for them. As cliché as it sounds, the days could be long, for sure, but the years were short.
It is a huge blessing that my kids found a shared love for camp. God blessed me with two daughters, and now grandkids. And now, as retirement approaches, things are changing, but what fills my heart is to know that this mission goes on.
His faithfulness is then, it’s now, and it’s in all of the tomorrows that will come for the next generation of kids and staff.
I don’t think God’s done with me in the ministry of camp. So, yeah, I think retired, but redeployed, maybe. I’m looking forward to whatever lies ahead.
Do Good:
- See more videos like this in our video feed.
