A case of old Scouts' honor

Thursday, May 3, 2001

MEL EVANS/THE RECORD Robert Cunniff with his sons Connor and Mack sitting in the Council Ring at Camp Glen Gray Boy Scout camp in Mahwah on Wednesday.

By ALEX NUSSBAUM and BRIAN ABERBACK
Staff Writers

As the sun cast shadows along the rocky trails of Camp Glen Gray on Wednesday evening, Bob Cunniff stalked his memories.

For the now-grown Boy Scout, the old campground in Mahwah's foothills was thick with phantoms: red foxes darting between log cabins, lanky city kids splashing in the chilly lake, stories of ghosts haunting the thick woods.

"The first night we set up camp, there was a bobcat howling in the woods," Cunniff, 37, recalls of an early 1970s trip. "It sounded so absolutely horrifying."

Cunniff was one of thousands of Scouts who camped here at the nation's longest continuously operating Boy Scout camp. His children come here, weaving their own summer stories on the steep 750 acres straddling Mahwah and Oakland.

Soon, he worries, it may all be gone.

Glen Gray, Bergen County's largest remaining chunk of privately owned, undeveloped property, is at the center of an open space fight as complicated as a Shakespearean play.

The script features feuding Boy Scout factions, allegations of mismanagement, an exclusive society inducted in the dark of the forest and rumors of mini-estates replacing the camp's old log cabins. In the wings, developers, environmentalists, and county officials joust for control.

The final act will likely begin today, when officers of the Scouts' Northern New Jersey Council are expected to recommend their choice from among several bidders for the land. A pristine link in the Ramapo Mountain chain -- as well as decades of tradition -- waits in the balance.

"Part of what makes this 85-year-old asset valuable is the generations of memories and histories and ties to the land," said John Hartinger, a leader of former campers hoping to buy the land and preserve it for Scouts.

"When you sell off that asset, you sell off those memories," he said.

Sources say the Scouts have at least a handful of bidders: The Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit group working with the county that has offered $4 million to make the camp a public park; Hartinger's group, the Friends of Glen Gray; and a religious organization that may want to open its own private camp.

The council says developers have offered as much as $7.5 million.

The organization is struggling to raise money in the aftermath of last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing the Scouts to bar gay members, which prompted some United Way chapters and private donors to withdraw funding.

The council has vowed to sell to a bidder committed to keeping the land undeveloped. But it needs money, said Cary Edwards, the council's president.

"The unequivocal goal is the maximum amount of money, maintaining open space," said Edwards, a former state attorney general. "But we're not going to sacrifice open space for dollars and we're not going to sacrifice dollars for open space."

Scout leaders say the debate over the camp's future has drawn unsolicited bids from developers who see not memories, but profit, in Glen Gray's woods. One group of Ridgewood physicians proposed a group of mini-estates on the property, but the bid was never seriously considered, the council said.

The county's bid with the Trust for Public Land would include state and county funding and private donations. Hartinger's group is collecting private contributions and has set a goal of raising more than $1 million.

Meanwhile, a religious group has made a last-minute offer to buy the camp for its own children, with a bid that significantly exceeds other offers, according to one council official.

Officials involved in the negotiation would not say which group made the offer, but it triggered fears that the land would be preserved, but not open to the public. The county would consider that a major loss, said Adam Strobel, the chief of staff for County Executive William "Pat" Schuber.

"We're hearing of this group at the 11th hour, literally," Strobel said. "But we're going to do everything in our power to see this land preserved."

Scout officials declined to comment specifically on the offers. After they make their recommendation, the full council may vote as soon as May 15.

The sprawling camp is a jewel amid the increasingly crowded suburbs, all sides agree. On Wednesday, it was an all-but-silent wilderness, where winds whispered through oak and beech trees, songbirds twittered, and woodpeckers rapped in the distance.

Lake Vreeland, the pond at the camp's center, lay table-flat, save for the occasional fish knifing through the surface. Among rugged pathways that snaked into the woods stood rough cabins pieced together by generations of campers.

Environmentalists say development on the land, even if limited by steep slopes and wetlands, would threaten water quality in the Ramapo River watershed and eliminate a key link in what could be a vast belt of protected land from northern New Jersey into upstate New York.

While all players in the debate agree on the importance of Glen Gray, it hasn't prevented an often-acrimonious debate among the camp's alumni.

A 1998 merger of Scout councils representing Bergen, Passaic, Hudson, and Essex counties left the group with 10 camps and made Glen Gray expendable, officials say. Handicapped-access problems make Glen Gray obsolete, they add.

But scores of adult Scouts who oppose the sale argue it has more to do with their governing body's financial woes. The council, they note dryly, opened a new headquarters in Mahwah recently for $3.8 million, just over the asking price originally stuck on Glen Gray when it went on sale in January.

Others note the camp initially belonged to the old Essex County council, and say its sale is largely being driven by Bergen County Scouting leaders.

Council officials deny both accusations.

Mostly, they say, they're battling the power of memories.

"You can never fight with someone who in 1940 put a nail in a lean-to," said Frank Pedone, a council vice president. "You can never fight with emotion. But what we're trying to tell people is, we don't have the money."

The camp was founded in 1917 by its namesake, "Uncle" Frank Fellow Gray. Considered a father of American Scouting, Gray imported the tradition from Great Britain in 1909, forming one of the country's first troops in Montclair.

A procession of Scouts followed, fathers followed by sons followed by grandsons -- Glen Gray leaving indelible impressions on all. The campers were often city kids from Newark or the suburbs of Essex County.

North Caldwell's Howard Tober came here as a 12-year-old in 1937. He crafted ax handles from tree branches and fashioned baskets out of reeds.

"A red fox walked through our campsite," Cunniff recalled. "As a kid, that was pretty impressive. We didn't have any foxes in Cedar Grove."

The camp even spawned a society of defenders, dubbed the "Old Guard." In the induction ceremony at the camp, former campers stand amid a ring of Old Guard veterans, who call the newcomers' names from the four compass points.

The Old Guard has 300 members, some who camped at Glen Gray back in the 1920s. For years, their service was limited to fundraising and repair work on the grounds. But, with the announcement that Glen Gray was on the block, they became a political constituency, feverishly opposing the sale.

"They are being shortsighted," fumed Tober, 76. The Scouts' latest crusade is to bring more urban children into the fold, he noted. "There are no other camps with the capacity to accommodate these kids," he said.

The Old Guard, along with the Friends of Glen Gray, have been raising money for months -- in change donated by young Scouts and six-figure checks written by their well-off predecessors.

The groups' goal is to keep at least the 100-acre core area of the camp -- the cabins, trading post, Lake Vreeland -- open to Scouting, even if it becomes a county park. The county, the Trust for Public Land, and the Scouting groups have talked about combining resources to buy the land.

Time is running short.

"The Lord stopped making real estate in our area," said Arthur Franklin, 51, an Old Guarder from Montclair. "Once it's gone, it's gone. And you really get a feeling that once this is gone, that's it."

Staff Writer Alex Nussbaum's e-mail address is nussbaum@northjersey.com