A Friend in High Places: Remembering Walter Cottingham

Long before he impacted the lives of countless campers at Falling Creek, Walter Cottingham had left his mark on Camp Pinnacle in Hendersonville, NC, which he directed up until 1973, when he moved the family cabin, board by board, from Pinnacle to a property he owned on Bob’s Creek Road.

Before long, he had established himself at neighboring Falling Creek and became known for his constant whistling – only stopping when he came upon a messy cabin during inspection – and his superpower ability to learn everyone’s name and cure homesick campers.

Three of his children, Walt, John, and Nancy, who also worked at Falling Creek, witnessed firsthand their dad’s amazing influence on campers and his unique ability to honor tradition while building and sustaining a thriving camp community.

After spending the academic year as Director of Intramural Sports at Furman University, Walter would spend his summer hiking over to Falling Creek, often using the trail he blazed over Long Mountain, where he would greet each carload as they arrived for their session, wowing campers with his amazing ability to remember, not only their names, but the names of their parents and siblings.

A Towering Presence

Walter’s role as the unofficial “superintendent of the high wire”, gave him a special vantage point to pinpoint those campers who were struggling, and he would go out of his way to help them. Sometimes it was as simple as redirecting their sadness toward an activity.

“Somehow children always just adored him,” said Nancy. “By listening to them and asking them what they would like to learn to do, he could redirect a child who was going through homesickness and help them have a wonderful camp experience,” said Nancy.

“He would walk them to their activities and talk to them, and within a couple of days, he had them baptized in the camp, so to speak, so that they were happy being there and would go on to have a good experience,” said Walt. “I can see him now – he was pretty tall – and he walked around with these little kids under his arm, and it was a sweet thing,” said Walt. “He had the sensitivity to be the person who could do that.”

“I have this memory of him running the high wire,” said John, “but mostly I remember his personality and being a positive force in the camp. That’s what he was wherever he went, and he loved camping. He really poured himself into it and gave so much of himself.”

“Helping campers was a really important role for him,” said Nancy. “He didn’t have as much of that interaction at Pinnacle, since he was running things, but at Falling Creek he kind of created his own job. He was always there and did whatever was needed, and somehow the children always adored him.”

Early Falling Creek Summers

During the summer of 1973, Falling Creek became a home away from home for the Cottingham’s, as their house was being reconstructed and power and plumbing reconnected. Nancy recalls teaching arts and crafts along with her mother during that first summer, and how appreciative they both were to shower in the women’s cabin and have meals in the Dining Hall. Nancy, who led the Arts and Crafts Program from 1976-1978, has fond memories of helping her dad teach square dancing. “He loved to lead the camp in some kind of group activity in the gym or on the ball field,” said Nancy, “and square dancing was one of those.”

John and Walt also had roles at Falling Creek. John worked one summer as a counselor and Walt worked seven summers running the Woodcraft Program. As one of the tougher activities, it took a little coercing to get campers to join the effort.

“I had to convince them that this construction work was a fun thing to do,” said Walt, “and it really was. We built outpost cabins, the library, and other buildings, and did an awful lot of it with hand tools,” Walt said. “Sometimes it involved dragging boards for about a mile through the woods.” Walt also played his guitar for morning assembly and his rendition of “Mountain Mean” remains legendary.

“We were good counselors and did a lot of good things for those children, but we were the ones that really benefitted,” said Walt. “John and I came away with a whole bunch of people who became lifetime friends.”

“There’s a group of counselors – mostly from Falling Creek – whom Walt and I have gone camping with over the last 45 years,” John said. “It’s just great friendships that we formed at camp and have carried on over the years, and it’s a tight-knit group to this day.”

Lifetime Hobbies and Friendships

Camp influenced more than just their social life. Nancy credits Falling Creek for her love of singing and performing, something that she continues in retirement. “I was part of the morning assembly; although I didn’t play an instrument, I really loved to sing, and it’s funny how the things you try at a young age at camp turn out to be really important to you,” said Nancy. “Now that I’m retired, I perform and sing in musical theater, which all goes back to the first performing I ever did on that big porch at Falling Creek.”

Walt Jr., who retired after 42 years of teaching, finds that woodworking, his camp expertise, sustains him in retirement. He is known for his award-winning hand-built birdhouses that are equal parts function and artistic sculpture.

Likewise, John has found a calling in retirement that grew out of his camping experience. “After about a year and a half of being fully retired from corporate law, I started to get a little bit itchy,” said John. “I ended up starting a nonprofit called The Pisgah Conservancy, supporting the Pisgah National Forest.”

Keeping Walter’s Legacy Alive

Of the three, Walt still lives close to Falling Creek. “My property is bounded by Falling Creek because of the expansion of the camp in the last 15 years, and I hike on camp property every day,” said Walt. In addition to helping clean and maintain old logging roads for trails, Walt took it upon himself to clean up an area in the woods that campers named after his father.

“Some campers decided to build this ring up in the woods in honor of my father,” said Walt. It wasn’t lost on Walt what his father must have meant to those campers to feel inspired to honor him with a memorial space in the woods. “It was kind of nice that those boys did that for my dad,” said Walt, “because he worked at camp longer than any of us, and inspired generations of boys to stay connected to Falling Creek.”

Never Forgotten

“And a little interesting tidbit about our dad, which harkens to all his camp experiences,” said Nancy, “but his two main jobs in life were college and camp. And throughout his life, he would meet people wherever he went, and he always knew their names. We were on a family trip to the Grand Canyon, and he ran into somebody he knew at Valdosta State College, where he had worked at the time and where he met our mother.” Nancy added, “and they recognized him because he was very distinctive looking.”

“And even when he got really elderly and had lost his memory to some degree, he still could do that,” said Nancy. “I think that was really impressive to all of us – the fact that he could be on some trip somewhere and run into somebody from Camp Pinnacle or Falling Creek and that all those relationships stayed with him all those years.”

“I do a number of craft shows in different places,” said Walt, “and it’s just become kind of a running joke in my immediate family of how long it takes before somebody asks me about my father. I was in Atlanta, and somebody came up to my booth and asked me if I was Walter Cottingham’s son,” said Walt. “I’m a junior, so that’s pretty obvious, but it’s still happening, and he’s been gone for 16 years now. People still come up to me every year and in multiple locations.”

“People will say, ‘you know, I remember this, and your dad did this amazing thing for me,’ and so on. So, we all have a lot of fond memories of those encounters,” said Walt. “And it’s obvious that the people that knew him at camp always loved and really respected the person he was.”

A Man of Principle

“He was a man of very high moral character,” said Nancy, “but it didn’t come across as preachy. He lived what he believed, and in that he was a wonderful example to the children. But even more than that, he made a big impression on the counselors. “He impacted me at that time, even though I’d grown up with it,” said Nancy. “At camp you’ve got college-age kids who are taking care of the children and who are at impressionable stages of their lives, where having a leader like that really matters.”

“And he was a leader, even though he wasn’t a head of things anymore,” said Nancy. “He was always somebody people looked up to, and when we run into those people, they talk about what an impact he had on them.”

It’s fair to say that Walter Cottingham’s emergence as a camp legend began with his own camping experience in his early days at Camp Greenville in the 1930s. In a photo of his first cabin, one camper’s ear-to-ear grin stands out among a group of serious-faced young boys; that grin, broadcasting a pure, genuine love of camp, belonged to a young Walter Cottingham, and that grin would go on to amuse and comfort generations of campers at Camps Pinnacle and Falling Creek who were lucky enough to work and play by his side, and who continue to carry his legacy forward.