About Camp Wigwam

Leadership

Experienced & Passionate Staff

The environment fostered here is unlike any other, in which a boy can feel confident in his ability and personality.

Our high staff return rate ensures consistency and deep relationships between counselors and campers year after year.

Camp Wigwam was born in 1910 when two visionary friends, Abraham "Mandy" Mandelstam and Arnold "Pop" Lehman, set out for the Maine woods with nine campers and six staff. What started as a bold idea quickly caught fire. Pop had already been building community through the Lehman Boys Clubs, an early forerunner of the JCC, while Mandy moved in the glamorous circles of Broadway's elite. Before long, Wigwam had attracted a remarkable cast of young men who would go on to shape American culture, among them Richard Rodgers, Frank Loesser, JD Salinger, and Leonard Baskin. Even Albert Einstein stopped by for a visit.

From the beginning, the program was rooted in something simple and powerful: boys discovering joy in a wilderness setting. Early summers were filled with back-to-nature adventures, camp craft, fishing, baseball, tennis, canoeing, puppetry, and marionettes. The philosophy was less about what campers were doing and more about who they were becoming.

Through two World Wars, the Great Depression, and every twist the twentieth century threw at them, Wigwam endured. The secret was never just the program or the place. It was always the people, the staff who returned year after year, the campers who grew up on these grounds and sent their own sons, and the sense that something rare and irreplaceable was being protected here each summer.

In 1964, Mandy and Pop, advanced in age and proud of what they had built, passed the torch to Ned and Helen Strauss and their three children, Jerome, Margy, and Bob. The transition was seamless, the spirit unbroken. New energy, new programs, and a new generation breathed fresh life into Wigwam, and the camp entered a true renaissance.

Then in 1976, Bob Strauss stepped into the role of full-time director and never looked back, guiding Camp Wigwam for nearly fifty years with warmth, wit, and an unshakeable belief in what this place could do for a boy. He raised three children here, and in a detail that tells you everything you need to know about Wigwam, saw all three of them married on these very grounds.

In 2020, Bob and his wife Jane began Wigwam's next chapter, initiating only the third ownership transition in the camp's history. Neal Goldberg, a lifelong camper and proud Wammer, began purchasing the camp operations and has served as year-round operator since 2023. Different name on the door, same beating heart.

Over a century in, the feeling remains, and the need for what Wigwam offers has never been greater. In a world that moves faster and louder every year, this place stands for something timeless: real friendships, genuine growth, and the freedom to be a child in the woods. What Wigwam has given to generations of boys, it is ready to give to yours.