Welcome Ellen-Anne!

This was posted yesterday, today Ellen-Anne gave me some more photos… so I include them now to show you more “history”! Precious!!!

We have some exciting news… something that only rarely happens at Greystone… something that will impact your camp experience (and the camp experience of every camper and counselor for many years to come). We have now officially hired a new Program Director and her name is Ellen-Anne Skelton!

Most campers will remember Ellen-Anne as the bright eyed, cheery, friendly, curley haired, guitar playing, singing all the time, happy, and careing member of the head staff last summer. She quite literally grew up at camp (her parents, Lell and Peter, have lived in our Westgate house for about 20 years and Lell works in a variety of ways behind the scenes to make camp perfect, her sister Nancy is in charge of our Mail room and helps in the office).

Ellen-Anne attended camp for ten years (Captain of the Odd Team, Best All Round camper, etc.) spent every summer of her college life as a counselor (she taught ceramics, guitar, and was a member of our Head Staff). She married her college sweetheart (James, who also worked on Men Staff and was our Travel Director) and moved to Asheville (where she was a rising starr in the Trader Joe’s grocery chain). We have always loved Ellen-Anne and she has always loved camp, dreaming that one day a position might open that would allow her to enter full time camp work. We did not think we had a chance of pulling her away from Trader Joe’s (one of the best companies to work for that I know of), but as it turns out she was praying that an opportunity would arise that would allow a return “home”.

That opportunity came this year when Kelly announced that she was going to retire from camp work after the summer. In many ways Ellen-Anne has been prepared for this work for decades, she is quite literally bursting with enthusiasm and creativity as she tackes the exciting job of preparing for the summer. First item on the agenda is to put together the best counselor staff EVER in the history of camp! I am not exagerating… we are going to have a spectacular summer and it begins NOW!

Expect great things from Ellen-Anne, and join us in gratefully thanking Kelly for her excellent contribution to camp for the past 20 years. We can honestly say that Greystone would not be the camp that it is today without the tireless efforts Kelly has poured into every aspect of this experience. Camp is only possible because of the selfless sacrifice and hard work of the people who work here. We are profoundly grateful for the efforts of these wonderful people past, present, and future.

Jimboy