STONEHAM – The changes this year at Camp Susan Curtis are evident even before turning into the narrow dirt road that leads to the Trout Lake facility and its array of log cabins.

Young men and boys with bows and arrows are aiming at colorful targets set up in the field where Clyde Millett’s steers used to graze. Children’s toys are in the yard near the farmhouse nearby. After Millett’s death, the Susan L. Foundation bought his farm that abuts camp land. New camp director Pat Carson said he plans to live in the house with his wife, Kim, two young children and two large dogs and become year-round Stoneham residents.

The camp, located amid 1,000 acres of lake frontage and woods, was established in 1974 to provide a summer camp experience for Maine children of low-income families. After their daughter Susan died while Kenneth Curtis was governor of Maine, he used memorial gifts to start the foundation in her memory. It now funds a camp experience for about 125 children for each of four two-week sessions.

Carson said kids tell him it’s the family atmosphere that brings them back year after year so he’s trying to foster that atmosphere. Arranging for more activities with cabin groups is one way he plans to foster the feeling of family.

“Building trust, cooperation and communication within the cabin group are just as important as activities like swimming and drama,” he said.

Four counselors who have been here for between nine and 13 years, first as campers and now as staff, he said, have assumed the responsibility for opening and closing ceremonies, which happen every two weeks when one group of 125 leaves and another moves in. “They are a wonderful group, do an absolutely wonderful job,” he said.

Some of the 13- and 14-year-old boys in the leadership program who have been here five or six years have taken on, by their choice, service programs, landscaping, reclaiming the old cemetery in the pasture, and growing a garden. “Eight good kids and two counselors can get a lot done,” he said.

It’s the first year they’ve had archery at camp and Jared Metz, a counselor from Boothbay, said kids have learned quickly to use the set of stringent safety practices. Most kids hadn’t used a bow and arrow before, he said, and now they’re hitting the target.

“Our biggest change is we’re kicking off Camp Susan Curtis on tour,” Carson said. They plan big picnics in the park for the four major geographic areas served by the camp.

There’ll be one at Deering Park in Portland; one in the Lewiston/Auburn area from where 130 campers came this summer; one in the Norway/Paris area; and one in the Bangor area. That’s part of their efforts to offer more year-round services for children and their families.

“We’re going to try to do more to include families,” he said, “to be a third support system for the schools and communities.”

A Christmas holiday reunion is planned for older campers, another first. They’ll use two heated cabins and the heated lodge to accommodate about 45 campers, he said, and do some winter camping. Carson also intends to make himself and a long-term counselor available for support and consultation throughout the year.

Carson, a former teacher and social worker, said this job brings together the things he had only hoped to find in a job: do preventive social work with children in a camp setting. Summer camp was an important part of his childhood, he said, and now he’s back at camp.

“This is the most beautiful spot anyone can imagine. It’s everything we could have hoped for. This is what I want to do for the next 30 years.”

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