CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL CAMP BIBEE THEME SONG! I CAN REMEMBER SINGING THIS SONG ON THE BUS TO CAMP!

>>>>>>>>BELOW ARE THE SIGNED DOCUMENTS FOR THE HUNTON BRANCH YMCA TO BE ON THE VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF HISTORIC RESOURCES! THIS WOULD BE GREAT! SUCH MEMORIES…..GOOD LUCK!! 

My days at the Hunton YMCA! This is what I remember! The kids nowadays don’t know what it means to have a place to go to after school and have a good time. We would go there, shoot pool, play cards, play ball, and do things to keep out of trouble! Drugs were un-heard of back then!  When summertime came, that meant day-camp. Mr. Edley, Mr. Walker, Mr. Daniels and others would teach us things like arts and craft. We wove key chains, and made baskets out of popsickle sticks. I still have my popsickle stick basket, somewhere! There were sleep-overs where we spent the night at the Y! We rode ponys and played ball on the back field.

We all would form a line and walk to the Jefferson pool in Dearington, which was located at the end of York St. When an intergration issue closed the pools to everybody, we went to Camp Kum-Ba-Yah in Boonsboro by bus! 

Phil Spinner produced a video about the Jefferson Park pool! 

(click here)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq3S8fOuXi0

Melvin Penn taught us wrestling. We lifted weights in the rec-room!
I even got the bar over my head! Of course there weren’t any weights on either end! Press Coleman taught us boxing and decipline! Mr. Edley read us stories.

Then came the big event of the early 60’s! Camp Bibee was located on Buggs Island Lake in Mecklenburg county. The bus left for a two-week stay in the wilderness, with nothing but your store credit card. There was horse-back riding, archery, target practice with REAL guns! Sterling Daniels, Ronnie Haskins,  Bip Daniels and others were our leaders and guides! Charles Douglas taught us archery. James Hunter took us horseback riding! There were races, ball playing, and who could forget the trading post! There was swimming. boating, and just plain fun! I got home-sick a lot, but there was always parents visitation day!  Pranks were harmless….especially when some fellow camper got the idea to get up in the middle of the night to smear toothpaste on everyone sleeping! To this day no-one ever knew the identity of the “Toothpaste Kid!”  Camp Bibee was fun and looked forward to every summer by all and only one serious accident ever occured!

After every game, win or lose, there was a dance at the Y! 35cents got you in to the latest music played from upstairs in the office to a speaker downstairs. Sometimes the record would skip for a long time(we would put a nickel on the arm of the record-player!), or the music would stop completely till the stack of records on the changer was reset to play again….maybe we will hear the other side of the song this time!

For some reason there were a lot of slow records, and the lights kept going out?? There was no need for police, the fights and altercations were few! The staff at the Y could handle any security…if any! You did NOT want to get banned from the Y! Its a shame that back then if you danced with someone elses girl you might get a black eye….today you might get shot and killed….this needs to be stopped!
We really need to open this place back up to the standards of yester-year, where family and God was first in everybodys hearts…and everybody went to the Y!! There were formal fund raising dinners, and membership drives to help with cost! Do you see any familar faces…if you do let me know, I want to list them later!