You get older and things hit you in the strangest ways. Example: A visitor to this blog dropped me a comment the other day, reminding me of the summer of 1980 — the greatest summer of my life and the summer we both spent working at Camp Billings in Vermont. That was such an adventure for me, on multiple levels — not the least of which was because I met Ralph Lawrence, who everyone called “Uncle Ralph.”

I was between my junior and senior years in college in 1980. I had grown up in a small-to-middlin’ Midwestern town, never had been more than 500 miles from home in my life, had never seen the ocean, spent the previous summer pouring tar for a road crew and was not about to do that again. I wanted an adventure.

One of my college suitemates had spent the previous summer working in a summer camp in upstate New York, and he suggested that I try to find a similar job. I saw an ad on a summer jobs board at college, looking for counselors to work at a YMCA camp in Vermont. I applied and, to my shock and surprise, I got a job editing the camp newspaper, working in the office and helping out as a handyman. I also had to help take care of a cabin filled with a dozen or so 6- and 7-year-olds.

After a two-day bus ride to Vermont (airlines were regulated in those days and cost a fortune — even a bus ride was $100 in 1980 dollars, or about $350 today), I arrived at the camp — in the middle of nowhere, on a beautiful lake. With the exception of two hard-drinking cooks (who met me at a flag stop and promptly hauled me to a bar), I was the first person to show up to work at Camp Billings that summer.

I helped open the camp as other counselors drifted in from all over the country in subsequent days. When some of them found out I had never seen the ocean, they hauled me across New Hampshire to bring me to Hampton Beach. I could see nothing but people from the north to the south when I got to that beach, but the concept of a body of water that stretched all the way to the horizon was completely foreign to me. I’ll never forget it.

Shortly after that, I met Uncle Ralph. He ran the place and already had worked there for more than 20 years. For thousands of people, Ralph was Camp Billings and he might have been the kindest person I had ever met. He was a natural at the job, and he knew everyone and easily connected with children in a remarkable and personal way.

The summer was wonderful. Much to my utter shock, I found I was fairly good at handling a cottage full of children. It didn’t hurt that the other counselor in the cabin was a longtime camp veteran who gladly showed me the ropes. Since I worked in the camp office, I talked to Ralph almost every day and watched as he dealt with desperately homesick children, parents who passed him rubber checks, recalcitrant plumbers who were sick of unclogging toilets filled with pine cones, and so on.

I had to leave camp early that summer — college in the Midwest begins earlier than it does in the East, and I had to help publish the first edition of the campus newspaper — but on my last night, I was talking to some of my kids when Ralph appeared. He pulled me aside and asked me to come back for the summer of 1981. That wasn’t something he did lightly, and I knew it.

There was nothing I wanted to do more, but I also knew I would graduate in May 1981, and I was fairly sure my parents would kill me if I worked in a camp that summer instead of starting my professional career. I told him I’d think about it, but even then I knew the likely outcome.

I’ve been back to the camp once since then — in 1991, when I crossed over from New Hampshire after covering a Bill Clinton campaign event. It was in the fall and camp was closed, but the place looked the same as I remembered it, with the clock tower in the middle of the campus and the beautiful lake in the background.

After the blog visitor dropped by, I visited the Camp Billings website today and found out that Ralph died last winter. The camp had a memorial service for him earlier this month.

He was the camp’s director for 38 years. I knew him for all of 10 weeks and I still can’t get over how much I admired him and how I still miss the camp he ran. It seems impossible that he’s gone, and the many testimonials on the camp’s website let you know that I am far from alone in the way I feel.