Pot washer to camp director
: Wagan retires from Interlaken

By Leon Cohen
of The Chronicle staff

In 1966, Milwaukee’s Jewish Community Center opened an overnight summer camp, Camp Interlaken, in Eagle River. During that first season, a 17-year-old named Howard Wagan washed pots and pans in the camp’s kitchen as a summer job.

There have been a few changes since then. The JCC is now the Harry & Rose Samson Family JCC and has moved from downtown Milwaukee to Whitefish Bay. The camp is now the Steve and Shari Sadek Family Camp Interlaken, and its facility has changed in ways too numerous to list.

And that teenage kitchen worker? After this season, Wagan, 58, is retiring from eight years as director of the camp, and almost 40 years of working full-time for the JCC in various capacities.

Moreover, Wagan’s association with the JCC may not end even then. As Wagan explained in a recent telephone interview from the camp, he may be going to work for the JCC in some part-time capacity that has yet to be determined.

In a highly mobile culture, many workers change jobs and even locales during their careers; but Wagan said he has found working at the JCC to be deeply satisfying.

“The sense of community has been positive,” he said, and “I have touched Jewish souls in a couple of ways.”

Wagan has done much of his work at the JCC in its Health-Recreation-Fitness department, to “help people condition their bodies” which he described as “the temple[s] of the soul.”

‘No distractions’

Camping touches Jewish souls in even more ways, he said. This organization “works with the spiritual part of kids, helping them stay connected with Judaism.”

For example, at camp “kids have no distractions” when it comes to observing the Sabbath, he said. “They come home excited about lighting candles and having dinner with the family” on Friday nights, he said.

JCC president Jay Roth has known Wagan since Roth came to the Milwaukee JCC 23 years ago. In a telephone interview, Roth praised Wagan’s dedication and his belief in what a JCC and Jewish camping have to offer.

“He is an extremely dedicated professional and a caring human being who has a deep commitment to Jewish life, to the JCC and to the Jewish community,” said Roth.

Moreover, Wagan is “all business, but also has a tremendous fun streak,” which is especially visible when he works with children and when he participated in a JCC staff mission to Israel, Roth said.

“He’s been a fabulous team member, loved and appreciated by his colleagues and by me,” said Roth. “It was his decision to go, not ours.”

After the first summer at Interlaken, Wagan, a Milwaukee native, continued to work for the JCC part-time during the school year while he attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and kept working in different capacities at Interlaken during the summer.

After earning a degree in business administration with a marketing emphasis, Wagan joined the JCC staff; but his full-time job looked more like two half-time jobs, as he spent half his time in accounting and the other in the HRF department.

He rose to assistant HRF director, then director. In 1998, he became what Roth called “my director of facilities,” involved in “management of the building and new projects, things like that.”

Along the way, Wagan met his wife, Diane, nee MacKenzie, who then was a volunteer nurse at the JCC’s cardiac rehabilitation program, and now works “in a day surgery center.” They recently celebrated their 25th anniversary.

Their two college student sons “grew up in camp and became the people they are today because of camp,” Wagan said.

Wagan’s family situation was one reason he decided to leave the camp director position. “It’s hard on a spouse to be separated three months out of the year,” he said.

Moreover, a camp community becomes so “tight-knit” that if a spouse is not working at the camp also, that person can feel “like an outsider” when he or she comes to visit, he said.