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For information about the Hidden Valley Camp for Girls reunion being held this weekend, please contact Betsy Burton at betsyburton@mac.com. Camp memories * Ann Evans, 57, Chattanooga: "I remember all the fun we had in the dining room, singing songs every meal. We were allowed to chew gum at camp, but before going into the dining hall, there was a tree that we had to stick the gum on. Sounds sort of gross when I think about it now." * Robin Leventhal, 59, Flintstone, Ga.: "Some of us got to go on a real overnight with a covered wagon in tow. We played tag on our horses in the water. The end-of-the-session horse show was certainly big, and we got to show off our riding skills." * Suzanne Haizlip, 63, Chattanooga: "My highest honor was when I was inducted into the exclusive Royal Riders Club. All we got was a green bandanna to wear around our necks, but it meant that we were accomplished riders and would get to go on an overnight trail. I remember picking corn along the way and roasting it in the fire. We cooked steaks. The best was our bareback tag game in the huge fields."
Dona Diftler was downright mad when her parents sent her off to a month-long summer camp.
It was 1966, and the 11-year-old protested loud and clear -- to no avail -- that she did not want to go to Hidden Valley Camp for Girls in Chattanooga.
"I was sent under duress and begged my parents to agree to let me come home if I hated it," says Diftler, 60, of Knoxville, then and now. "They sent me for a four-week session. After two weeks, I called home and begged to stay for the second four-week session.
"Each summer thereafter, until the camp closed (in 1972), I went for eight weeks. When my parents picked me up, after camp, I cried all the way home."
There's nothing like food fights, being sprayed by a water hose in the dining hall, putting a frog in a fellow camper's bed and sneaking out of bed during the night to skinny dip in the pool, says Diftler. And the friendships she made are still around.
"My mother passed away on March 3," Diftler says. "It was my camp friends I called first. They are also my close family."
Hidden Valley Camp for Girls, located near Apison, was founded by a group of businessmen as an investment, says Betty Burton, who served as camp director for five years. The camp didn't make a substantial profit for the investors, so, after about 12 years, it closed, she says. But this weekend, Diftler and nearly 40 other Hidden Valley campers and staff will come back to Chattanooga for their first reunion.
"It was my job to recruit the campers and oversee what was going on," says Burton, of Signal Mountain. "Basically, I walked around a lot.
"I remember one time leaving the camp to pick up supplies and, when I pulled onto the property, I saw some girls on horses in the water. They were not supposed to be there. And one of the girls was mine.
"My girls, Betsy and Ann, were campers and every summer for nearly a decade, we'd basically spend the entire summer at Hidden Valley," she says.
Photographs from the Hidden Valley Camp for Girls brochure show some of the activities campers could participate in.The camp offered canoeing, tennis, horseback riding, swimming, archery, crafts, hiking, softball and volleyball. Girls were offered lessons in gymnastics, tumbling, jazz, ballet and synchronized swimming in the camp's Olympic-sized pool.
On the 180-acre wooded property, there was a 10-acre lake and buildings that housed the recreation hall, craft house, administrative building, dining hall/kitchen and housing facilities, and cabins that accommodated about 130 campers.
Burton's daughter, 56-year-old Betsy, recalls that she was 5 years old when she first attended Hidden Valley. Though campers were required to be at least 6, she got a head start because her mother was the director.
Her love of horses was fostered at camp, and today she and her husband have a farm in Colorado where they raise horses, alpacas and angora goats.
"I think this love of the outdoors stems from the great experiences from camp and being outside so much as a kid," she says.
She also learned to push the envelope and take chances at Hidden Valley.
"We did things that we shouldn't, like sneak to the barn and ride the horses in the middle of the night," she says.
Photographs from the Hidden Valley Camp for Girls brochure show some of the activities campers could participate in.Madeline Bell, 60, originally from Chattanooga and now a resident of Los Angeles, also has vivid memories of camp at Hidden Valley. Now working as a location manager on film and television projects, Bell says she came to camp for several years in the late 1960s. While she enjoyed canoeing, pottery, archery, tennis and horseback riding, what has stuck with her most is that the camp awakened her "sense of God in nature, the beauty of quiet and a spirituality in friendships."
"I remember that, when I returned home after camp every summer and went to the mall, I was struck by how unimportant material things had become and that there was a deeper meaning to life that has never changed for me," she says.
"I'm not sure I would have come to that without camp, and I feel sad for kids who never have camp experiences, especially in this tech-driven society where kids constantly have their faces glued to their iPhone and no longer know how to interact.
"It was possibly the most pure and honest time of my life."
Contact Karen Nazor Hill at khill@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6396.