Scott Brody found belonging at summer camp when he was eight years old. Hailing from New Jersey, he heard much enthusiasm from his cousins about Camps Kenwood & Evergreen, based in Wilmot. Brody’s mother took the chance to enroll her son in the program in the face of relatively high costs.
Brody experienced a transformative summer that first year and came back five more times — he described his experiences as “life-changing.” He especially grew from strong mentorship that helped him discover his own strengths, he said.
“I was a kid who was a little shy and disconnected and uncertain,” he said. “The version of myself that sort of developed at camp was the version that has followed me into life.”
He graduated from college and then law school, even practicing for three years, but in all that time he kept coming back as a camp counselor and training to someday lead the staff. That chance came when he was 30 years old.
Camps Kenwood & Evergreen stayed in Brody’s life for a total of five decades, with 30 years spent as the director and owner.
Last December, he decided to sell the brother-sister overnight camp last December.
Brody gave up the torch to focus on other camp work. A year into his tenure as national board chair of the American Camp Association, the pandemic shook the foundations of hundreds of camps across the U.S. As a result, Brody engaged with policymakers in Washington D.C. to funnel aid to summer camps.
He worked with the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop public health guidelines for safe camp operations — and he found a knack for it.
“In order to open up the time and space for this kind of work on an ongoing basis, not just for a little three-year term, but really to do the work in D.C. that would need to be done, I’ve got to pull myself back from Kenwood & Evergreen, and the only responsible way to do that was to make sure that Kenwood & Evergreen had the full attention of an incredibly capable leader,” said Brody, who now leads the Association’s government affairs work.
The new owner, Jack Schott, oversaw operations the previous summer. Now, he hopes to bring about new programming and training opportunities.
“Every improvement at camp is about how do we help make the friends that they’re going to have when they meet at eight years old, but they’re friends when they’re 28 or 80 years old,” Schott said.
Camps Kenwood & Evergreen has operated since 1930 and currently hosts about 260 kids total — 130 boys on the Kenwood side and 130 girls on the Evergreen side. The camps’ information page highlights the tight-knit community feel, the freedom kids have to explore different activities and the connections made between older and younger campers.
When Schott spent his first summer at the camp, he felt nostalgia for what once was: being unplugged from screens, making real friendships and dealing with the highs and lows of growing up.
“Kids can be kind to each other, but also kind of cool and play sports, but also do arts and crafts,” he said. “It’s like the ’90s childhood, but safer and with better mentors all the time.”
Like Brody, Schott’s path always seemed to land on summer camps. He co-founded Camp Stomping Ground in upstate New York and the Summer Camp Society that trains camp directors. To date, he has visited over 500 camps in 48 states.
Schott gained several skill sets from his nationwide visits, from overarching long-term plans on how to build culture to mediating conflicts between campers.
“The last thing that I learned is really that all of the things I just talked about only work when camp is fun and kids want to be there,” he said. “Fun is not a byproduct. It’s the glue that holds camp together. It’s the glue that lets the learning happen when kids are happy, when their psychological needs are met.”
With one summer as owner already on the books, Schott implemented some new elements into Kenwood and Evergreen. He upgraded the art area and added pickleball and slingshots as new activities. He wants to make renovations to the theater and assembly space for this coming summer.
Brody, for his part, will still be involved at Camps Kenwood & Evergreen and made a commitment to stay until the camp’s 100th summer in 2030. He said he’s looking forward to seeing the growth from campers, as he’s done for the last three decades.
“I’m still the guy that plays guitar at the campfire, I’m there as a problem-solving resource, I’m there to get to know kids and help the support counselors and, really, primarily, I’m there to support Jack and his team,” Brody said.
