After October fires, cherished Sonoma County summer camp stakes out temporary quarters

Lex McDermott was in between classes last October at his Los Angeles high school when he heard the news.

Camp Newman, the beloved Jewish summer camp north of Santa Rosa he had attended every summer since third grade, was surrounded by wildfires and at risk of burning down.

“As soon I heard that, this feeling of dread just hits you,” he said. “Like, I know this shouldn’t happen, but what if - and then there was nothing to do but keep waiting to find out if we got lucky, or if it was as bad as we thought it was.”

In all, the Tubbs fire on Oct. 9 would claim 80 of the 90 buildings on Camp Newman’s 485-acre property off Porter Creek Road. It was a resounding blow for followers of the treasured Sonoma County site, operated by the Union for Reform Judaism. It is the largest Reform Jewish camp on the West Coast, serving more than 1,200 campers each summer from all over the world.

“It was almost like a loved one had died, or a home that’s been in your family for so long had burned down,” McDermott said. “When you’re at a place like camp, making memories every day ... it becomes a second home. You almost have a relationship with the camp itself, like this living entity.”

Now, more than eight months later, the property has been scraped free of debris, and 291 campers just wrapped up their first week at Camp Newman’s temporary campus, dubbed “Newman by the Bay,” at the Cal Maritime Academy in Vallejo.

Newman’s operators plan to rebuild, but it’s not clear when summer sessions will return to the Porter Creek property. So far, more than $1.5 million has been raised for the effort, with an additional ?$5 million allocation from the state budget, said Ruben Arquilevich, Camp Newman’s executive director.

The camp’s loss prompted an outpouring of support on social media. McDermott and his camp friends posted photographs on Instagram with long, emotional captions about their shock, but also their hope for the future.

The photograph he posted showed the sun as it dipped over the hills to the west of camp, its buildings in the foreground.

“My heart is with the entire camp community right now,” he wrote. “We are what makes camp the place it is. As long as we survive, camp will survive and rebuild with us.”

This summer is special for McDermott. At age 15 and heading into his junior year of high school, it’s the first year he is old enough to attend camp for its entire eight-week summer period - an experience he’s been looking forward to for a long time.

But not being at the Porter Creek site means this summer is different than the way he always imagined it would be.

That’s something many of the senior campers and leadership have had to come to terms with over the past few months, said camp director Rabbi Erin Mason.

As soon as they confirmed the Porter Creek site was lost in the fire, camp administrators met to discuss what it would mean for the future of Camp Newman. One thing was certain.

“We sat down and basically decided that the most important thing for our community was that we needed to have camp this summer,” Mason said. The announcement went out to their camp community that same night of Oct. 9, via a Facebook Live video.

Within a month, administrators had secured a contract with the Cal Maritime campus, and Newman by the Bay was formed.

Instead of cabins surrounded by trees, campers sleep in dorms. Prayer services are held with a view of San Pablo Bay, rather than inside the beloved amphitheater where the whole camp used to gather.

But at Newman by the Bay, campers have access to a massive collegiate rugby field, and there is roller dancing, which is fun.

“We were able to take those things that were so important to what we do both programatically and spiritually and communally and figure out how to make it work in this space,” Mason said. “So that when you walk on the Cal Maritime campus, it still feels like camp. It doesn’t feel like you’re doing activities on a college campus.”

There was a little bit of that feeling at first for McDermott - the strangeness of something so unfamiliar.

It is certainly no longer the space he spent the past eight summers growing in his faith and as a person, the same place his mother attended summer camp decades ago. But he knows Camp Newman will rebuild, and that he has an important role to play.

“It’s a really unique summer, and it’ll give us the opportunity to be able to look back and say we were that summer,” McDermott said. “To say, ‘I was part of Newman by the Bay.’ ... I will always be part of that legacy, part of that year that they had to rebuild, and I’m really happy that I get to be part of the effort.”

You can reach Staff Writer Christi Warren at 707-521-5205 or christi.warren@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @SeaWarren.