Photo: The “older gentlemen.” Steve Elkins, Murray Archibald, Ward Ellinger and Allen Jarmon after horseback riding near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Una Perspectiva Diferente
Thanks to the hospitality of our dear friends Ward Ellinger and Allen Jarmon, Steve and I have just returned from ten delightful days in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Gorgeous weather, perfect temperatures, good food, and good friends made it everything a vacation is supposed to be.
Vacations have a way of taking us outside of ourselves—outside our daily routines, outside our comfort zones, outside our need to be busy all the time—and making it possible for us to relax and see the world and ourselves through new eyes.
For example, the trip started innocently enough: the four us had a very early morning flight out of Dulles Airport, and had traveled to Virginia the night before. After settling into our hotel, we headed out for a quick dinner. Back at the hotel after dinner, there was a brief moment of panic when Allen thought he had left his cell phone at the restaurant. It turned out to be in the car, but before that discovery was made, he called the restaurant and described where we had been sitting.
“Oh yes,” the person who answered the phone said, “the table of older gentlemen.”
Older gentlemen?
Well yes, I suppose we are getting to be of a certain age. But none of us really think of ourselves as “older gentlemen.” We got a laugh out of it at the time, but somehow the expression, “older gentlemen,” kept coming up all through the trip. Most of the time we were still laughing about it; sometimes it hit just a little too close to home— especially after a quite long, and extremely rocky horseback ride through the Mexican mountains!
Bowlegged and limping (and feeling every bit like older gentlemen), we all four made a beeline for the hot tub, where we relaxed our sore muscles and tender backsides, and reassured one another that our parents at our age would never have gone zip lining through the canopy, or just survived that bumpy road on the backs of our fearless, if somewhat plodding, mounts.
During our trip to Mexico, I had time to ponder the phase “older gentlemen,” not because I feel old, or because I’m worried about getting old, but because way down deep inside I still feel like a teenager. I am still the boy, I realized, I am still becoming the man.
Does anybody ever feel completely grown up? I hope not.
Being on vacation brings out the kid in us, I suppose, and for that I am grateful. Like most of us, I sometimes let deadlines and work and meetings, drain my creative energy. Putting work aside, even for a little while, is good for the soul.
Here at CAMP Rehoboth, we are well into our 23rd season. Our success has not come without a fair amount of “soul searching” over all those years. Like other successful organizations, we have to constantly try and see ourselves, our world, and our community through the eyes of others.
The community being served by CAMP Rehoboth is a diverse one. Lately, even the entire LGBT spectrum has been expanded. The Advocate reports that: “Oregon State University’s campus resources group uses ‘LGBTQQIA’ to represent not just ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, and allies,’ but also includes ‘same-gender-loving, two-spirit, asexual, pansexual, and polyamorous.’”
From working for marriage equality here in Delaware, to awaiting the verdict from the Supreme Court on DOMA and Prop 8, we live in an era of rapidly changing attitudes. At the same time, technology continues to shrink the world around us, constantly exposing us to greater and greater diversity.
Celebrating the diversity of our great, big LGBT-alphabet soup of a community, is always a part of the work of the CAMP Rehoboth Community Center. Understanding our role in the community around us (and how we represent that diversity) is an ever evolving process that relies upon fresh perspectives from both the leadership of the organization and the people it serves.
Over the last two years, the leadership of CAMP Rehoboth has worked hard to reimagine many of our committees and teams. Quite often, our biggest successes have come about because we were able to enlist new volunteers willing to step into leadership positions within the organization. From the Membership Committee, to the Volunteer Orientation, Grant Writing, and Sponsorship Teams, fresh talent, with its accompanying new perspectives, has provided the impetus needed for internal innovation.
That said, we are still largely a volunteer driven organization, and every new endeavor takes time to plan and implement. Discovering fresh talent within our community is very important to us and to the continued success of CAMP Rehoboth. Anyone interested in getting involved with CAMP Rehoboth, please fill out a volunteer form online, and plan to attend one of the Volunteer Orientation meetings scheduled periodically throughout the year. For those with special leadership and management skills, I encourage you to talk to one of the members of our Board of Directors. Let us know what you do, and what you would like to do.
CAMP Rehoboth has been my life and passion for many years, and both Steve Elkins and I and others, have worked hard in recent months to create a Succession Plan for the organization. That plan is currently in the draft stage and will be presented to the Board of Directors later this month for review and revision, and is scheduled for completion in early summer.
Being that we are drawing nearer to official “older gentlemen” status, having a succession plan in place, and attracting the best volunteer talent we can find, is the best way to ensure the long-term success of the organization.
We are always on the lookout for a fresh idea—something that will help us to see, as they say in Mexico, from una perspectiva diferente.
Murray Archibald, CAMP Co-founder and President of the Board of Directors of CAMP Rehoboth, is an artist in Rehoboth Beach.