Seeds of Peace camp director turns reins over to new blood

OTISFIELD – Don’t argue religion – you won’t win.

Respect people as human beings – even if you don’t like them.

Change what you can – and don’t dwell on what you can’t.

Finally, stop talking and start listening.

Tim Wilson learned many of these lessons from his father growing up in Pittsburgh, and he put them into practice at the Seeds of Peace camp, which has been bringing Israeli and Arab teenagers together in search of common ground since 1993.

The 65-year-old camp director has been there from the beginning, but he departs after addressing more than 100 Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, Egyptian and American campers Monday night. He feels he’s leaving the organization in good hands.

It’s time to move on, he said.

“There’s a lot of good young people here,” Wilson said as he watched counselors running activities on a recent afternoon. “They’re going to be fine.”

Steven Flanders, chief operating officer, said he anticipates no void because Wilson trained most of the staff, including many Seeds of Peace alumni who return each summer to serve as counselors and facilitators.

“He leaves big shoes to fill, and those shoes will never be filled,” Flanders said Monday. “But he left an organization that will be stronger in the future because of his sheer presence and his contributions.”

Wilson was a young man when he came to Maine as a counselor at Camp Powhatan. He went on to become the first black head football coach in Maine, at Dexter Regional High School. From there, he became an adviser to three governors, among other things.

Wilson was tapped by the Seeds of Peace founder, the late John Wallach, to transform Powhatan from a traditional boys camp into an international peace camp for boys and girls.

Wilson worked at Pierce Atwood Consulting while juggling his duties at camp before going to work full time as director and vice president of the Seeds of Peace International Camp in Otisfield and the Seeds of Peace Center for Coexistence in Jerusalem.

Over the years, the camp on Pleasant Lake expanded its scope to other areas of conflict beyond the Middle East to include youths from India and Pakistan, Cypriot Turks and Greeks, and Bosnian Muslims and Serbs. But the focus never left the Arab-Israeli conflict.

At camp, Wilson oversaw everything from meals and activities to the closed-door “coexistence sessions” in which teenagers talk through their problems.

Because of knee and hip problems from his football days at Slippery Rock University, Wilson used a golf cart to patrol the camp and keep an eye on activities.

Wilson brought his own unique perspective to camp having grown up black at a time when segregation was the rule across much of the nation. Wilson experienced his share of racism. He recalls being spat upon in an airport when he was a child.

His father taught him that there’s good and bad, and to focus on the good. It’s important to change what you can change, and leave the rest behind. There’s no point dwelling on it. “You get stuck in quicksand, and you go nowhere,” he said.

Wilson also learned that you don’t argue about religion. You don’t win those arguments, he was told. Thus peace reigned at family gatherings that included Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baptists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics and black Muslims.

At camp, Wilson told teenagers that they don’t have to become friends with their “enemy.” They simply have to learn to live together. “You don’t have to like somebody,” he told them. “Just treat them with respect and like a human being.”

Wilson tells the campers that they need to spend more time listening. “God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason,” he said.

He also tells them to stop being victims. “My father said you can wallow in it and figure somebody owes you something, or you can get off your behind and do something,” he said.

The teenagers respect him.

They learned that they couldn’t tell him, “You don’t understand. You’ve never been there.” That’s because he’s been there.

He lived in the Middle East for three years. He knows the people, the checkpoints, the issues. He and his wife Jacquie were among the last foreigners to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat before he fell ill and went to Paris, where he died.

“He gets respect because he gives it,” Jacquie Wilson said. “He’s a very honest, down-to-earth, no-frills, no-B.S kind of person. He will tell you the straight answer. He will not give you flowers when it’s vinegar. People respect that of him.”

The legacy that Wilson leaves behind is a bunch of campers – more than 2,500 have attended camp – who’ve learned to think of themselves. Wilson had an uncanny ability to teach people about themselves, and turn them into individuals, Flanders said.

Wilson has seen his ups and downs over the years. Intifada, suicide bombers, train bombings, the World Trade Center attacks. This summer’s session began with full-scale war erupting in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.

Wilson has no definitive answer to the tough question that comes from campers: “The kids look at me and say, ‘Tim, can we win?”‘

But there’s no giving up, he said.

By the time the session ended, there was a cease fire as campers prepared to begin returning to their homes beginning on Tuesday.

So there was hope.

For his part, Wilson continues to maintain that the people want peace, and they’ll obtain it if governments will let them.

“I’m just tired of people fighting and battling, and we’re messing it up,” said Wilson. “This is not rocket science.”