Herman Pingel

Caretaker

   

"Herman Pingel, he's our man; if he can't flush it, no one can." --famous Dining Room chant

Simply put, he was the heart and soul of our beloved camp.

Herman's story is as fascinating as he was. In 1923, at age 17, he arrived at Ellis Island from Stoetel, Germany, not knowing a single word of English. He taught himself how to speak & read English and eventually became a confectioner, owning and operating a fountain shop in Brooklyn. In the mid-1940s he moved his family out of the city, where he bought a dairy farm, right across the road from the Wayne Country Club. He taught himself how to be a dairy farmer. He had a little roadside ice cream stand, and his customers were often guests from the Country Club. Many of the guests were counselors on their day off from Camp Rosemont. This is how he met Bill Heft, who after purchasing the Country Club, asked Herman to help him get the property in good enough shape to open it up as a camp.

So once again, Herman had to teach himself a new skill: caretaker. From that point, Herman became anything and everything that Tyler Hill Camp needed him to be. He started out alone, mowing the lawns...all 210 acres, as well as fixing up the buildings. He convinced Bill and Joe to hire his friends to help, including a master plumber, a master builder, a top notch painter and an expert at maintaining golf courses. For three decades, the camp had a sparkle and shine that no other caretaker could come close to accomplishing.

But there was so much more to Herman, as he became a father figure to many of the campers who didn't get the attention they needed and deserved from their own parents back home. And many of these parents understood what he meant to these children. He developed deep friendships with a number of his colleagues, including Joe Bernstein, Marty Bernstein, Artie Sunshine, Al Leibowitz, Sy Sundick and Paul Sundick, who worked with Herman for many years.

He was a self-educated man, an avid reader who, in typical self-deprecating fashion, would often describe himself as "an ignorant roughneck." But everyone who knew him, knew that he was a man who had a deep understanding of the human condition, along with a common sense of compassion for nearly everyone he met up at camp. He was always around when you needed him, and you couldn't leave for the summer without making sure that you said goodbye to Herman before hitting the road home. He was the full-time caretaker for 30 years, until he had to retire in 1985, to care for his ailing wife, Alice, who died at the end of that summer. He outlived most of his peers at THC, including Bill, Joe and Beno, to name a few, and he would continue to be a presence in camp, well into his nineties.

There are those who will remember Herman simply as the Caretaker, but to so many of the faithful, he was a father, a brother, a sage, a mentor and Tyler Hill Camp's guardian angel. But most of all and best of all, he was a great friend who loved Tyler Hill Camp more than he loved himself.

Video Clip: Friends reflect on Herman's importance at THC