Everybody loves Gracie Kirkpatrick, the vivacious, bubbly, compassionate community missionary of the Richmond Baptist Association. For 31 summers she has directed the association’s unique ministry known as Camp Alkulana. When the camp opens this summer for its 94th season, Gracie Kirkpatrick, who retired in February, will be sailing in her native Florida. When asked how she thinks she will feel come summer, she muses, “Well, I am sure I will miss it but I won’t feel anxious about camp.”
Gracie knows that the camp will be in good hands with her successor, Beth Reddish Wright, who is also a former camp counselor. Interestingly, both women are graduates of Stetson University, once considered “the Baptist school” in Florida. Gracie’s immediate predecessor, Barbara Davis, was also a Stetson alumnae.
In 1966 Gracie made her first visit to the rustic camp in the mountains of Bath County. She and Barbara Davis had worked together on the staff of the Florida GA camps and Barbara asked her to come for the summer and teach swimming. “My first impression of camp was that the water was too cold. Back then, we had swimming first thing in the morning right after camp inspection. But despite the cold water, I thought everything about camp was wonderful.” Gracie Kirkpatrick was hooked.
In 1969 she joined the staff of the Richmond Association as director of South Richmond Baptist Center and she soon began helping with the camp. When she came to the Center, it was supposed to be for one year; but it turned into five years with prospects of a lifetime career. She took some social work classes at VCU and in 1974 she enrolled in the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond. She jokes that she “squeezed two years of study into three years.”
When finished at the seminary, she became director of Camp Alkulana; but it was only a summertime position. “I was just trusting God for the other nine months of the year,” says Gracie. She sacrificed the possibility of a secure full-time livelihood in order to serve the campers. “I had a sense of urgency about the camp and I believed that it was a good ministry.” She made ends meet by working all kinds of other jobs on the side. She sold her automobile and rode a motorcycle even in cold weather. She did whatever it took to survive till summer and camp.
Briefly, in 1981, she considered leaving the part-time position. A large local church needed a full-time children’s minister; and she applied, deciding that, if selected, she would leave Alkulana. At the same time, she was trying to line up another of the many part-time piecemeal jobs to keep body and soul together till summer. She had an appointment for training to drive a school bus.
Surprisingly, the trainer was a former camper. The trainer revealed that she had gone to the camp as a child and shared what the experience had meant in her life. She said that she had “found Christ” at camp. “By the time she finished,” says Gracie, “I decided to call that church and withdraw my name and find some way to remain with the camp.” She added, “God does not normally speak to me so clearly, but that incident was an example of the dramatic speaking of God in my life.”
Camp Alkulana has been a ministry magnet in Gracie’s life as well as in the lives of so many campers, staffers, counselors and volunteers. The summer camping experience for Richmond area youth began in 1915 and located at the present site at Millboro Springs in 1917. It was called Alkulana, an Indian name, because the lanterns in the cabins at night looked like “bright eyes.”
For decades it has been a source of inspiration, fellowship, learning and just plain fun for hundreds, indeed thousands, of inner-city and suburban Richmond children and youth. Many of the alumni came from the several Baptist Centers in Richmond. Most of the participants received scholarships through the Week of Prayer Offering, now simply the Camp Alkulana Offering, which is gathered in Richmond Association churches. Many grateful alumni have contributed to the camp’s endowment fund.
The camp is rustic. Gracie loves the great outdoors but is grateful that campers no longer have to use an outhouse. The camp is built on an incline and Gracie admits that three decades of hiking up and down the hills have produced a bad case of “Alkulana knees.”
Each summer nearly 200 children and youth participate in the four sessions. It takes 60 volunteers two weekends to ready the camp for the season and about 50 staffers work over the course of a summer. Gracie admits that they have “home grown” many of the counselors who started as campers.
A typical day begins at 7:45 with a staff meeting; and shortly after 8 o’clock, it’s rise and shine, flag raising, worship, breakfast and cabin cleaning. The campers have Bible study, which centers on “God’s love and Jesus’ ministry,” swimming lessons, interest groups, and adventures including caving and hiking.
There’s laughter and lots of love. Gracie heard one inspector from the American Camp Association say, “I have never been to a happier place.” A camper once explained the secret in a thank-you note: “Dear Miss Gracie, Thank You for being a friend, counselor and swimming teacher. All of the money in the world couldn’t pay you for what all of this has meant to me. Thank you for trying to make the impossible, possible. And for making me know that I can do anything if I put my mind to it. I’ll never forget you and your beautiful smiles and your words of encouragement.”
In 1970, when still new in social ministry, Gracie wrote a paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13 with the closing verse: “Now I can catch only a glimpse of any good resulting from investments I make in the lives of others. I become discouraged when I cannot see the fruits of labor. But in the light of Eternal Love, I shall realize the full value of my efforts. The qualities in life that really count are faith in God, hope for people and love for God and for each other. The most lasting and the worthiest of these is love.”
Gracie Kirkpatrick has assumed the meaning of Alkulana itself. She, too, is Bright Eyes.
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.