Skyland Camp for Girls has been a tradition in many families since the camp’s early days. Today, we’re highlighting one of those families, one that has had four generations of Skyland campers—Susanne (Brown) Rice, Susanne (Rice) Allen, Susanne (Allen) Heartsill, and Emily and Georgia Heartsill.
Their camp experiences influenced their lives and the world around them and extended far beyond the summers they spent on Skyland Hill. It all started in the 1920s, when young Susanne Brown rode the train from Tampa, Florida to Clyde, North Carolina and Skyland. She returned for a total of 13 seasons. Her daughter Susanne (Rice) Allen describes her mother, a contemporary of Hempy and Francis Harris, as “the ultimate Skyland camper,” and it was Brown who designed the first rendition of the Skyland shield.
So intertwined was Brown’s life with Skyland that “when she died, we buried her with a Skyland Camp sweatshirt,” Allen says. So it was little surprise that Allen would follow in her mother’s footsteps.
Allen attended Skyland from 1955-1959 and, she says, “it just opened up a whole new world for me.” In fact, Allen developed a lifelong passion while at Skyland: the craft of weaving: “When I was at camp, during arts and crafts, I remember weaving a basket . . . and, ever since then, I’ve been fascinated by weaving. I became a weaver 25 years ago, and I think that’s where my love of weaving came from.”
Allen later served as President of Weavers Guild, just one of several leadership roles she’s held. She credits her time at Skyland with instilling her with the confidence to do so. “I became more of a leader from things I learned there rather than in my little home town. I did a lot of civic things . . . I kind of blossomed,” Allen says. Skyland also fostered Allen’s lifetime passion for horses. “That’s where I began my love affair with horses,” she says. “The last year I was there, in 1959, I won the horse show. I didn’t have opportunities to compete growing up; that was the highlight.”
When it came time for Allen’s daughter, Susanne (Allen) Heartsill, to attend camp, there was little question where she would go. For their family, Heartsill says, going to Skyland “was like breathing. It was just what we did.”
Heartsill attended from 1980 to 1994—eventually serving as a counselor and teaching horseback riding. “I started going when I was 9 years old and never stopped until I had to,” she says. Although she was initially nervous about camp, once she arrived, “it took about two seconds to get integrated,” Heartsill recalls. “I loved everything about it.” Heartsill went from camper to Counselor-in-Training (CIT) to staff and especially remembers the special “sisterhood” she formed with the other counselors.
She credits her time at Skyland with instilling in her the confidence to pursue her profession as a veterinarian. “It taught me how to be a leader in a career field full of men at that time,” she says. Without Skyland, she believes, “I don’t know that I would’ve had the confidence or the spirit to get past that.”
Heartsills’ daughters, Emily and Georgia, both attend Skyland. “They are bigger Skyland fans than I am,” Heartsill says. “It’s become exponentially larger with every generation. They both wear their Skyland t-shirts all year round and about every week Georgia wants to know how long until Skyland. This starts about September.”
Emily, now a teenager, has attended since she was eight years old. She says Skyland is “like a family tradition. My great grandma went, my grandma went, my mom went, some of my aunts went.” Like the other women in her family, she believes Skyland has increased her self-confidence. The people at camp, she says, “accept you for who you are and it makes you feel really good about yourself. And that definitely helped me be more confident in school and back home.” Georgia is the youngest of this four-generation legacy. Georgia began her Skyland adventure as a seven-year-old, and is counting down the days until her next Opening Day!
All the women in the family describe Skyland as a home away from home. Says Allen, “When you go back there, that’s home to me. It’s a magical place.” To Heartsill, “It’s like an extension of family. . . . For me, Skyland was a constant. It was my home, and it still feels that way.” And when a fifth generation Brown/Rice/ Allen/Heartsill camper comes along, Skyland will be right here where we’ve always been, ready to welcome her “home.”
