Colonel Reeves, 25-Year Director Viewed With `Awe And Respect'
from the Aug. 6th, 2004 "Lifestyle" feature on Nature Camp -- by the Lexington News-Gazette and reporter Mary Price

No history of Nature Camp would be complete without mention of Col. John "Jack" Reeves, the camp's director for half of the facility's 50 years in Rockbridge County. Although Reeves retired as camp director in 1996 and died in March 1999, his influence lives on at the camp where he spent decades of summers.

"For several generations of Nature Campers, Col. Reeves was emblematic of what Nature Camp was," said current camp director Paul Cabe, who was a camper during the years Reeves was director. "He was a larger-than-life figure ... and a constant presence throughout the years."

For 25 summers, from 1972 to 1996, Reeves and Nature Camp were one and the same, or appeared to be. With his sizable physical presence, craggy face overshadowed by enormous eyebrows and a booming voice to match, Reeves frequently only had to look askance at a misbehaving camper to achieve order, those who knew him well recall. "He was the kind of man who, when he asked you to jump, you said `How high?'" said Phillip Coulling, who was a camper under Reeves for seven years and a staff member for an additional seven afterward. "I viewed him with a mixture of awe and respect and great fear, but great admiration as well. ... I had the utmost respect for him."

Like many of those whose acquaintance with Reeves began in childhood, Coulling said that it was many years before he realized that Reeves' first name wasn't "Colonel." At camp, the chain-smoking director was universally known as "Colonel" or "The Colonel." Both Cabe and Coulling recalled that Reeves, a professor of biology at Virginia Military Institute, had an encyclopedic knowledge of the outdoors and all that was in it. He was well-known for his vast collection of Indian arrowheads, as well as his ability to tell at a moment's glance what was an arrowhead and what was merely a sharply pointed stone.

One of Reeves' first moves upon taking over the directorship of Nature Camp was to change who did the teaching, Coulling noted. Before Reeves' arrival, campers were supervised by college-age counselors and taught their classes by adults. Reeves re-assigned teaching duties to the counselors, and brought in the adults as outside speakers. While acknowledging that campers of the 1940s through 1960s learned well under the old system, Coulling noted that, "When you're 12 years old, being taught by a 20-year-old in a relaxed, friendly, outdoor setting is a totally different experience than being taught by an `adult' in a school classroom." Coulling went on to say that it was the experience of teaching at camp which made him appreciate Reeves' system the most. "As a staff member, I felt humbled whenever I recalled my early years as a camper and realized that most of the young campers probably wouldn't remember most of what I tried to teach them," Coulling recalled. "But if I could connect with them and inspire their interest in the natural world, then, I hoped, I would have made a difference in their lives as those who taught me had made a difference in mine."

And that's just what Reeves would have wanted.