This is the first issue of season 28 of Letters from CAMP Rehoboth, and though very little about this winter has been business as usual as I continue to fight as hard as I can against the lymphoma that has tried to slow me down, I am happy to welcome this new year—and looking forward to a better year for me, and another great year for CAMP Rehoboth. Both Murray and I have been deeply touched by the outpouring of support from our community, and we thank everyone for the prayers and cards and green ribbons. In his CAMPmatters column, Murray has captured a little bit of what the past few months have been like. Fortunately, we have a Board of Directors and a staff who have been able to help us through the worst of it. Our thanks to all of them!
Thanks are in order, as well, to several members of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington who ventured to the beach in the middle of January for two very special performance of their ensemble show It Takes Two!, featuring some of the amazing soloists who sing with the chorus. Over the last few seasons, cabaret performances by members of GMCW have become a January tradition in Rehoboth, and we were delighted once again to welcome these talented gentlemen to the CAMP Rehoboth Community Center.
There is no end to the music this winter, and our own CAMP Rehoboth Chorus Can’t Stop the Beat! when their 2018 winter concert opens at Epworth United Methodist Church for three performances only. This year Musical and Artistic Director Doug Yetter promises blues, rock and roll, jazz, and much more. Can’t Stop the Beat! performances are February 9-11. Tickets are available on the CAMP Rehoboth website, and sell out quickly. All of us at CAMP Rehoboth take great pride in our Chorus, and they are true community ambassadors for the spirit of CAMP Rehoboth. We are delighted that the CAMP Rehoboth Chorus is supported in part by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
Beyond the CAMP Rehoboth Chorus Concert, the In Brief page of this issue highlights more of the events and activities coming up at CAMP Rehoboth in the next few months. The biggest, of course, is the always amazing CAMP Rehoboth Women’s FEST in April. The Women’s FEST team has been hard at work ever since last year’s FEST ended. That’s dedication! Tickets for Women’s FEST will go on sale in early February. Long before Women’s FEST, Director Russell Stiles returns to the CAMP Rehoboth Community Center with a new production of Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, February 23-25. Tickets are $25, and are available at camprehoboth.com.
Every year we say farewell to dear friends—more than ever in recent years, it seems—but when word came to me that Bill Seivert had passed away, it opened a floodgate of memories. His obituary can be found with others on the We Remember pages of this issue, but our memories of him are far more personal and I wanted to recognize the fact that he was very active and engaged with CAMP Rehoboth during its early years. Bill served as a member of the CAMP Rehoboth Board of Directors in the late 90s, wrote a column for this magazine for more than 15 years, and held a staff position as the second director of the CAMPsafe program. Remembering Bill, I took a look back at some of the many columns he wrote for us over the years. As his editor, I always knew I could depend on him for a thoughtful analysis of what was happing in our culture at the time. Knowing Bill, 2017 was probably about all he could stand of the current state of affairs. Rest in peace, my friend.