Pemi’s Founders: “The Four Docs”
We believe that Camp Pemigewassett is the oldest residential summer camp for boys in the country under the same continuous family ownership and management. Three close friends, Drs. Edgar Fauver, Edwin Fauver, and Dudley Reed, founded Pemi in 1908. All graduates of Oberlin College and Columbia Medical School, they had worked as counselors at a nearby camp and ultimately decided to start their own. After a long search throughout the Northeast, they chose the present site on the shores of Lower Baker Pond. While serving on the faculties of Wesleyan University, the University of Rochester, and the University of Chicago, respectively, they remained as Pemi directors until their deaths in 1946, 1949 and 1955. Dr. John H. Nichols, also an Oberlin graduate, joined them in 1910, serving first as a counselor, then as a director until his death in 1979. “Doc Nick” was also a college educator, first at Ohio State and later at Oberlin, where he headed the department of Physical Education for decades. The high standards set by these “Four Docs” still prevail at Pemi today.
Today’s Board of Directors
The Pemi Board of Directors meets with the Managing Directors roughly six times a year to oversee camp operations and planning. Two of these meetings are multi-day and face-to-face, with one in the Fall at the camp to review the recent season and developments with the physical plant, and the other elsewhere in the winter for concentrated discussions of Pemi’s mission and our success in pursuing it—past, present, and future.
Two generations of the Fauver and Reed families are currently represented on the Board, serving in renewable three-year terms or in the one-year rotating seat specially designed to introduce the younger generation to the responsibilities of ownership. In addition, three independent members offer crucial perspectives from beyond the ownership circle.
