About the CRC web site, and about me

About the CRC web site

These pages originated on August 30, 1999, with color photos of the reunion held at Camp Taconic in the Berkshires August 28 and 29. Back in 1999, these photos were taken with a conventional 35mm film camera. I dropped the film to be developed on the way back home from the reunion, and included in the order a CD-ROM of the scanned photos. I picked them up and posted the photos the next day.

Since then, the site has grown helter-skelter, as I added additional material from time to time. The (reverse) chronological details can be seen on a separate page showing all the updates that I've made.

Former camper Donna Lewis bought the URL "http://camprobinsoncrusoe.com" around 1998 or 1999, and started her own pages. Because of the URL, I've sometimes called these the "official" camp pages, but in fact, they are not owned by the management of the camp. Having closed in 1970, the camp is no longer a going concern. Much of the original design and implementation of Donna's pages was done by Bob Handloff's son Mark.

In July of 2011, having not had the time to update her pages in quite some time, Donna asked if anyone would be willing to take them over, and I volunteered. In preparation for this, I first re-arranged (and I hope improved) the top-level page (what I call the "CRC Starting Page") for easier navigation. These updates were released on August 3, 2011. Then, on January 30, 2012, I finally got around to transferring most of the contents of her pages to mine (I added a few remnants I had missed in a release of February 4, 2012). I think Donna's intent is to eventually have the "camprobinsoncrusoe.com" URL point to these pages. See the "Links" section of the CRC Starting Page for other sites with photos and information about the camp.

About me

Larry circa 1955   Larry in 2009
Larry in 1955   Larry in 2009

I am Lawrence J. Krakauer. I first attended Camp Robinson Crusoe as an Intermediate boy in 1952, and remained a camper through 1957, when I was in Trout Pond Primitive. I subsequently became a Trainee and a Forester (two stages of counselor in training) in 1958 and 1959. Camp Robinson Crusoe was an important experience for me, partly because it was accepting of individual differences. I was a cerebral, very non-athletic kid in a group that was fixated on baseball, but nevetheless I felt myself part of the group (this was in no small measure due to the efforts of head counselor Larry Paley).

In these pages, "CRC" stands for Camp Robinson Crusoe, of course. I must confess that as an engineer, those initials came to mean other things to me. In my college days, they evoked the "CRC Tables", a hardbound book of mathematical tables produced by the Chemical Rubber Company. Later, when I worked in the field of Data Communications, it came to stand for "Cyclic Redundancy Check". "What is that?" I hear you cry. Don't ask.

Now go back to the CRC Starting Page to decide where to go next.


This page was last updated August 3, 2011