My Uncle Sam died the other day.

He was 100.

He was not really my biological uncle, nor was he my uncle by marriage — or what my cousin refers to as an”honor” uncle, a phrase that always makes me wince a little bit, like that person is second rate on the familial scale of importance. Anyway, Uncle Sam was married to Aunt Lynne, who was also not my biological aunt, nor my aunt by marriage. But together, in their own quiet, reserved way, the two of them functioned more or less as my parents for eight weeks each year from 1972 to 1982. They owned and ran Camp Towanda, the sleepaway camp in Pennsylvania where I spent summers from the time I was nine until I was nineteen, which, when you’re young, is a lifetime.

The first time I met Lynne and Sam, when I was not yet nine, they came to our apartment in Forest Hills to show us a slide presentation. My father, who loved going to sleepaway camp as a child in the 1930s, insisted that I go, too. My mother, however, was very worried, and her concern was fairly obvious the night they came over, because she was chain smoking Virginia Slims. Nobody ever smoked in front of Lynne and Sam, who seemed to be about as vigorously healthy as two middle aged people could possibly ever be.

My father set up his screen at the far end of our living room and Uncle Sam fired up the slide projector, and there was camp. This is the dining hall, they said. This is the social hall, and the lake. Next thing I knew my father was shaking Uncle Sam’s hand, and Uncle Sam was slapping my father on the shoulder. She’ll be fine, Aunt Lynne said to my mother, and six months later, after my grandmother sewed a thousand name tags into enough underwear and socks to keep me going for a year, off I went. As Lynne promised I would be, I was fine, except for the bout of hysterical homesickness I suffered from. My mother, two weeks after the camp bus pulled away and out of sight, developed shingles.

I went back the next year, and eight more years after that. Nearly every kid I went to camp with did the same thing; some had siblings who also attended, and many returned as counselors, for years. Aunt Lynne and Uncle Sam ran a pretty tight ship — they were fun-loving people but also

Aunt Lynne was a big presence on girl’s campus, and spent a lot of time

really interesting people: during the year, they were both educators with a profound dedication to teaching children. I was never in a classroom with either of them, but

I’m not sure if other people have similar relationships with the camps they went to as children — assuming they went at all —

I’ve written about Towanda a lot over the years; there’s a lot to say about the place and its impact on me. Recently, the (now no longer) new camp owners threw a 90th Anniversary celebration at camp, which was founded in the 1920s:

Years ago, my father and I did somehow discover that Uncle Sam was somehow related to my Uncle Marvin’s side of the family. Uncle Marvin was Carol’s father — married to my dad’s sister and therefore, I guess, my “honor” uncle — but in no way second tier.