A dream supremely realized: A few years after his summer-camp failures, Bruce Ingram was a husband and a father. Courtesy: Bruce Ingram
It’s an old tale—the shy boy, the unattainable girl—but one that brings joy and a warm heart with each new, true telling.
Dozens of summer camps dot the coves of the Blue Ridge’s mountains, and for generations college-age students have worked at these establishments, gaining valuable life and job skills. And, of course, given the nature of young folks of that age, summer romances often became part of the experience as well.
On an early June day in 1974, I spent my first day at Camp Easter Seal in Craig County, Virginia, as a proctor in charge of Falcon Cabin. While visiting the various camp buildings, I wandered into the laundry room where I met the most mesmerizing female I have ever encountered. She identified herself as Carolyn Elaine Adams from Clifton Forge, Virginia (“But everyone calls me Elaine”), and her green eyes, long eyelashes, and kind, sweet demeanor instantaneously infatuated me. I immediately made it my goal to encounter her whenever possible and be prepared to say clever and intelligent quips as preludes to asking her for a date.
The plan proved disastrous. Within a week—and while I was still working on witticisms—I saw Elaine walking hand-in-hand with a counselor. I spent the rest of the summer fuming about their relationship and constantly cursing myself about my shyness and lack of confidence concerning all things pertaining to females. I also learned that Elaine was everything I was not: sophisticated, well-educated and well-bred. I spent my senior years in high school and college wondering if I would have to attend summer school—again—to graduate.
I returned to Camp Easter Seal in the summer of 1975 and so did Elaine, sans the male counselor by her side. During first-day orientation, I deliberately sat down at the table where she and her cabin proctor Sue were sitting. My plan was to ask Elaine and Sue to go canoeing with me, and then afterwards ask out the former. I figured no way would Elaine go paddling alone with me.
The scheme did not go well. I positioned Sue in the bow and Elaine in the middle so that I could be closer to her. However, Sue couldn’t make even the basic strokes and before long on that early June night, her errant draw strokes had caused Elaine to be sitting in a pool of water and her cotton shorts and top to become drenched. The excursion ended prematurely as a shivering Elaine asked to return to the launch. While she scurried back to her cabin, Sue and I took a leisurely walk and I succumbed to her flirting and flattery. We dated a few times that summer, but it was Elaine who was constantly on my mind.
The summer of 1976, I returned to Camp Easter Seal for one reason—to ask Elaine out the first day back… no matter what. Like all my machinations involving her, this one was flawed because she, as I learned later, spent that summer working at a bank closely affiliated with her father who was manager [of course he was] of a local business.
As fate would have it, I had one last opportunity to woo the girl of my dreams. In May of 1977, a Camp Easter Seal reunion was announced. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, I contacted the organizers and asked if Elaine Adams was attending and they said no. I gave them her phone number so they could invite her; I was obviously still too intimidated to call her myself.
On the day of the reunion, upon arrival I scanned the room for Elaine, saw her alone, and for the first time boldly approached her. Taking a quick glance at her ring finger, I saw no diamond there and decided to remain by her side until I could summon up the will to ask her out… which took approximately four hours. However, once again my overtures did not go well.
“Would you like to go out this Friday or Saturday night?”
“No, I have dates both nights.”
“Would you like to go out Friday or Saturday night two weeks from now?”
Elaine retrieved a datebook from her pocketbook, flipped pages, and said, “No, I have dates both those nights, too.”
Saturated with desperation and despair, I pressed on. “How about Friday night, three weeks from now?”
“No,” she said after flipping more pages. “I have a date then, too.”
The poet John Greenleaf Whittier once penned these lines:
For all sad words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are these,
“It might have been.”
I had endured three years of longing for what I considered the perfect female. Many times I had imagined what it would be like to date her, marry her, even have children with her… live as a family with her out in the country in these mountains. What might have been are indeed the most wretched words known to man or woman.
Devastated, I started to say goodbye forever to Carolyn Elaine Adams, but something allowed me to croak, “How about Saturday night, three weeks from now?”
She flipped a page of that insidious datebook and said, “I’m free that Saturday. I’ll pencil you in.”
Penciling someone in for any kind of meeting is not exactly a ringing endorsement that the future event will happen. So I was not surprised three days later when Elaine called, automatically assuming that she was about to cancel our date. Instead, she announced that she had an “unexpected opening” for the coming Friday and would I like to have our first date then?
Shocked, I stuttered “Yes,” and that Friday evening when we arrived at a restaurant, I brazenly held her hand for the first time.
When we sat down, Elaine said, “I didn’t like it when you held my hand…but then I did.”
On our fifth date, Elaine confessed (probably to her amazement) that she was in love with me. I said I loved her too and promptly asked her to marry me. She said yes – an affirmative that still astonishes me after nearly 44 years of blissful marriage.
And 14 miles from Camp Easter Seal, we live in a cove above a creek in these Blue Ridge mountains; across the hollow dwell our daughter, her husband, and our two grandchildren.
The story above first appeared in our January/ February 2022 issue.
