Max Eckenburg Merit Scholarship Award |
Testimonials
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Bill Rengstorf  Bill was on staff in 1966 and has been actively involved with the program ever since. Bill is a engineer at Boeing.  |
When I was 5 years old, I couldn't wait to turn 8 so I could join Cub Scouts. I was so excited the day I finally joined Cubs but then I couldn't wait to turn 11 so I could be a Boy Scout and go camping and hiking. When I was a Boy Scout, I couldn't wait to become a senior scout so I could do more challenging activities in the mountains like the other guys. At age 16 I met the inspiring Max Eckenburg on a Cascade Trail Blazer trek. That challenging two-week adventure, led so well by Max, would set the final course for my scouting career and service to others. After the trek, Max invited me to be on his first-year Camp Sheppard High Adventure Program staff in 1966. I was honored and eager to be a part of something so new, exciting and challenging because our amazing mentor led it, Max. Now, after more than fifty years of scout membership and forty years since my first season at Camp Sheppard, I can still remember Max telling us that our summers on staff would be some of the best of our lives and that the best projects were the ones done for others. It was truly prophetic. The absolutely life altering and positive affect that Max, other adult leaders he attracted, fellow staff members and the program have been for me can not be overstated. Serving on the High Adventure staff has had a huge effect on my path to becoming a well-rounded, skilled and responsible adult, husband and father. I am forever grateful for the challenging opportunities Max trusted us to succeed at where others would have held back, for we did succeed as young staff and now as men. So it's my turn to gladly give back to the program. Thank you Max. |
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Denny
Fenstermaker
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I have always thought of my Camp Sheppard experience as
the cornerstone of my professional career as a rescuer, firefighter, emergency
manager, and fire chief. It was an opportunity to gain an enormous amount
of responsibility and leadership experience. This was usually in situations
of potential danger, in wilderness settings, without adult oversight. If
an emergency developed, there was no close assistance or advisor to consult. It was this type of preparation that has served me well for 35 years as an emergency responder and leader in many public service agencies. Just by looking at the life experiences of the other staff members I worked with, it is obvious that I was not the only person who benefitted this way. To a person, every one of the past staff, found ways that the Camp Sheppard Staff position put them on the road to be a leaders in their field and rewarded scouting and society with role models that any American would be proud of. At times I have found myself wishing that my own children had the opportunity to gain this type of training. I see other youths in the teenage years going down the path to ruined lives and can only thank God that I was blessed enough to have been on the Camp Sheppard Staff. I have told the story of my professional career to many people and even employers and oral boards, and it is without a doubt, all because of scouting that I am where I am today. |
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Greg Janz
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At the age of 15, an opportunity came into my life to become
a staff member for the High Adventure Program located at Camp Sheppard.
The experience began with the selection hike to evaluate the candidates
for staff positions in the upcoming year. During this process the staff
observed our behavior, actions and leadership potential. As a young person,
I realized I was competing for a coveted position with a highly motivated,
trained and professional staff. Later I would meet the person behind this
group of young people. Reporting to the camp that first day, I was apprehensive and excited. It was the first time I really remember meeting Max Eckenburg, Camp Director. This was a formidable man, dressed in work trousers, flannel shirt, suspenders, skin showing signs of being exposed to the elements and holding a pipe. Max was an integral part of my youth formation by providing me guidance, support and pushing me to my full potential. Throughout my life, while in the U.S. Marine Corps and my present position as a high school Principal, I remember Max’s influence to do the right thing, push for excellence and assist others in reaching their full potential. I believe the lessons I learned during this experience provided me insights to guide, support and push my students and staff to reach their full potential. |
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Chuck Caley
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Each of us can look back in our lives and identify defining
moments. Moments, in retrospect, that utterly transformed us or sent us
down a path that defined us as who we are or what we have become. For me,
that moment occurred the day my application for a position on the Camp
Sheppard High Adventure Staff was accepted and I was chosen as one of the
few to serve under Max Eckenberg. The year was 1969 and I was 14 years
old, about to turn 15, the minimum age for a staff member. I had seen the
photos in the Seattle Times newspaper of the staff playing football in
the summit crater of Mt. Rainier. I had heard of the legendary Max Eckenberg
and had actually met him once during a winter weekend adventure to camp,
but I had no way of knowing the profound effect my eight years at camp
were to have on me. During my eight years I served with over 40 staff members. When I started as a 1st year staffer there were only 8 on staff. As I advanced from a “freshman” staffer, as Max called us, through my sophomore, junior and senior years at camp (Max likened the growth of a staffer at camp to the advancement one experiences through high school) the staff grew as the program grew until 18 staff members were required to provide leadership on the weeklong hiking and climbing trips the program offered. We all felt like war buddies, a band of brothers that faced adversity and responsibility as a shared commitment. At age 16 we were responsible for the sacred lives of every scout on our hike, through pouring rain, snow, sun and hundreds of miles of trail. By age 18 we carried that same responsibility to a new height as we had total responsibility for leading scouts up Mt. Rainier, putting in camps at 8,000, 10,000, 12,000 and 14,410 feet on the great mountain. Through it all Max taught us leadership, responsibility and above all trust. He was so sure of the judgement, maturity and training that he provided that he trusted us with the lives of scouts only a few years younger for a week as we slowly found our way up crevasse fields and around seracs on an obscure route up Mt. Rainier. It was this trust, training and level of responsibility at such a young age that I look back at with utter amazement. Max knew that by “Providing the Challenge” he was providing the most effective avenue for our growth as individuals and leaders. Tom Brokaw penned the book “The Greatest Generation” illustrating the accomplishments of the young men who fought in World War II. They were “provided” with a challenge and grew up quick as they met and overcame obstacles. They were young yet shouldered incredible responsibilities which they rose to meet. I see the experiences we had at Camp Sheppard to be very similar. Although we were not dodging gun fire, we carried the responsibility for the lives of our fellow staffers and young scouts as we roped them to us and guided them up peaks and along trails in Washington’s remote mountain wilderness. Now in my 50’s, I am proud to again be part of this program that does so much for the growth and development of leadership skills in young people. I create print, web and video media for the promotion of the program and watch a new generation of young leaders develop and grow under the same philosophy of “Providing the Challenge”. Max’s gift of trust and training have defined my role in my chosen career as a teacher, and his gift of hiking and climbing skills lead me to the mountains for weeks and weeks each summer as I explore the Cascades of Washington and the High Sierra of California. How could I have known what a gift Max bestowed on me when he accepted my application 39 years ago. My eight years at camp were the defining years of my youth and the most influential events of my life. |
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Malcolm
McPhee |
When I reflect on my formative years, I know that the one experience that had the most impact on who I became as an adult was my time on the Camp Sheppard Staff. The lessons that Max Eckenburg taught about self-reliance, teamwork, leadership, responsibility and personal accountability have served me well during my 26-year career in the US Naval Reserve and my ongoing career as a commercial airline pilot. I have been fortunate to hold several leadership positions in both military and civilian life, from Squadron Commanding Officer to Airline Captain and Instructor Pilot. I know that my years on the Camp Sheppard High Adventure Staff laid the foundation for my ability to serve as an effective leader and mentor. I am forever grateful that Max took a 15-year-old snot nosed kid and gave him the opportunity to experience and grow in that environment. | |
Scott
Olson
 Special Agent Scott Olson, who served on Sheppard staff in ’77 & ’79, is currently posted to the FBI’s New York Division and is a squad supervisor with responsibility for counterintelligence matters.  |
My first
contact with Max Eckenberg was not personal, it was with the young guys
he selected to serve on the staff at Camp Sheppard
during the years I attended as a camper. Having been fortunate to live
near the Caley family, Chuck was already a legend in my scouting world
even before I moved across to the troop from the Cub pack. He lead several
of the first hikes I took and we all learned about the existence of Camp
Sheppard. But while Chuck was the legend, I looked forward to Conservation
Camp and the other weeks of Sheppard hikes I managed to talk my parents
into because of guys like Len Mallory and Victor Smith. Guys who I admired
and wanted to be like in the unique way only a young teenager can idolize
of older ones. While I am pretty sure they were somewhat less enthusiastic
to see me each year, they did what all great role models do, they tolerated
me with good humor and helped me to learn. And it was from being allowed
to associate with this unique group of people that Max had assembled on
the Sheppard staff, that I took the long shot and applied for a position
on the 1977 High Adventure Staff. That is how I found myself, to my complete surprise, slogging up the Emmons Glacier during the summer of ’77, leading a rope team and trying to match the performance of the rest of the staff. I was 15. I spent that summer and the ’79 season trying to be as good as Tom O’Brien (never got close, may he rest in peace) and trying not to do stupid things (never really did that either). But through those two summers, in addition to living, hiking and working with this remarkable group of young men and women, I was in Max’s domain. I can see him now, without even closing my eyes: High-topped woodsman’s boots, green denim work pants with suspenders, tattered flannel shirt with the sleeves cut short and on cold mornings, his arms covered with a pair of old wool socks with the toes cut off. But what I really remember is the grin, especially when he was picking us up at the end of the week. Whether we were coming off the mountain or popping out of some trailhead, he usually had that grin and he wanted to know how the week had been. That really impacted me. I was a just a 15 year-old kid and Max Eckenberg wanted to know my opinion about how the week had been. Looking back to that time now over the 30 intervening years gives one some perspective and it occurs that maybe he had two things in mind. Perhaps he was asking because he wanted me to think about how things had been and maybe how I could make them better for the next week instead of making them worse. But it also occurs that he asked because it mattered to him. He asked because he cared. Looking back it seems that Max saw potential more than he saw current ability. He believed that if you took young people with potential, put them into the raw environment of the mountains on their own and gave them an important job to do, they would inevitably rise to the occasion and perhaps reach their potential. And he didn’t do it because he thought it was easy or safe. He did it because he thought it was right and because he cared. He wanted each of us, even me, to reach our potential. Getting youngsters to rise to their potential has always been what the high adventure program at Sheppard has done best. Go out and do it better than last time. That’s the lesson I took away. And that is the lesson that is available today for those willing to listen. To the current class of young Instructors In Training, don’t quit, you’ll get there. To the senior staff that deal with the IIT’s, please be patient, they’ll get there. To the Camp Sheppard High Adventure Base and its custodians past and present: Thanks for everything. Not everyone agreed with all of Max’s ideas or how he ran the High Adventure program at Sheppard. But if one has to have a legacy, having lived a life doing what you think is right, regardless of some opinions and doing it because you care – well, the world would probably be better off if more of us tried to leave that legacy, like Max’s, behind ourselves too. |
