The Jack and Pat Kay Centre Camp's Tribute to Mariah Unger

Mariah was really dedicated to everything she did, and I remember the— during school, the, um, the year before she was supposed to be art specialist at camp that summer, she was planning her projects that she would do at camp, and she was really dedicated to her job, and, and she had so many creative ideas, and she was really excited about them. And that dedication and creativity was part of her personality. I would spend a lot of time with her at school and talk to her her outside of school, and she was always really passionate about the things she loved, especially art. And she was really creative, and I'm really inspired by her dedication and her passion and her creativity.

Every time I talk about Mariah and how she was an awesome counsellor, I always start off by talking about the first time I ever met Mariah, and that was during my fifth summer at Centre Camp when I was 20 and Mariah was 16. And I knew we were going to be co's, and I was just thinking about all the things that I would have to teach Mariah so that she would become an awesome counsellor. Counselor, but as it turns out, I really didn't have to teach her anything because Mariah already was an awesome counselor. She was awesome at working with kids, and I think that the first thing that drew the kids into her was her awesome smile. Mariah smiled at camp every single second, and she had a huge and infectious smile that everybody loved. Mariah was also such an enthusiastic person. Every second she was that camp. Even if it was 40 degrees outside, Mariah never let it show that she was tired. She just kept up her energy level, and the kids kept their energy level up, and it was awesome. Mariah was also really good at not letting anything ruin the fun of camp. If it started to pour cats and dogs outside, Mariah didn't care. She just ran out into the rain and started singing, and she She would sing "It's Raining Water, Hallelujah," and all the campers and me would just dance with her. And she made it into something that was fun instead of something that was raining out our favorite activity. And Mariah was also such a creative person, artistically and otherwise. She would make up new words and cheers and games and songs for the campers. It was absolutely amazing, and she always had the greatest same-day costumes. And I always admired Mariah because no matter what, she was never embarrassed about what she was doing. If she looked ridiculous, she didn't care. She would just go over the top for the kids, and it was amazing. Mariah was an incredible counselor, and I loved working with her. She was the best counselor I ever worked with.

I don't think there was a single camper at camp that didn't know and love Mariah. Anyone who ever met her, she brought a smile to their face. A couple years ago, she got in touch with me on Facebook, and she, of course, the first thing she asked me is, "Do you remember me?" And of course I remember her. I remember a lot of campers, but Mariah was very very special. She's one of those dream campers, the ones that counselors just wish all their kids were like, and I was fortunate enough to have her, and Center Camp was fortunate enough to have her as both a camper and a staff member, and I know that she left her mark.

So about 4 years ago in summer of 2008, I met Mariah. This would have been my second summer as a counselor, so I was still a junior and I was, you know, fresh off my first year as a counselor and really excited and a hotshot. I could do anything. And all of a sudden, this first-year Mariah came in, and I kind of figured from day one, it's like, okay, you know, she's the newbie, and I'm already the experienced this and that, and it's going to be a very interesting summer. And to tell you, that's really interesting was actually the exact word I would use to describe that, but not in the way I originally thought. So I met Mariah at pre-camp, and we were assigned our groups. And just so it turns out that we were assigned to be together with another counselor. And, you know, it was something that I was a little bit unfamiliar with. So our first day on the job, Mariah and I and this other counselor, Alana, we kind of were getting really excited to meet all the campers. And, you know, these are little 4-year-olds, so they're extremely cute. And when we met them, most, most of the people, what they tend to do is, you know, sit there and just get to know the campers' names and the campers get to know the staff names. Mariah was, you know, quite a little different. She not only did that, but she put a twist on it and made it incredibly fun to the point that I— it rubbed off on everybody around her, and it really set the tone for what was going to be an excellent summer. And personally, that's what And that's how I remember Mariah, and that's how I picture her, as this person who no matter where she went to, and no matter who she was working with, who she was standing with even, it just— her glow and her happiness and excitedness and truthful honesty just rubbed off on everybody. And in my opinion, I think that's what made her such a wonderful person to be able to work with, to be a friend of. Ultimately to get to know very well.

Mariah and I were campers together at Centre Camp and then CITs together, and then finally we were first-year staff together. I really admired Mariah as a counsellor. She had so much energy and creativity, and she had a way of turning the silly songs and games that we learned as CITs into the funnest things ever for her campers. She, she was also a really great friend. We were friends for 10 years. Our friendship started as just a camp friendship. We would see each other every summer, but then it grew into a relationship that we sustained all year round. It was a very special friendship, and I really treasured it.

I first met Mariah through Yeheskel. They were friends through the Center Stage program, and when Mariah became a staff member, she would always anticipate the day that she would become an art specialist, specifically working with me and working with all of the fun stuff that we had. Um, she was supposed to work as an art specialist last summer, but her illness prevented her from doing so, and we all thought that the best thing for her would be to take a summer off. Um, I was looking forward to seeing her this summer, and I looked at Chesapeake Ham website earlier this year, and it hit me that I was supposed supposed to be her supervisor this year. This was our summer. This was the summer where we could make magic. Um, I know that the art program will miss her smile and her spontaneity and her creativity and her effervescence and everything that she brought to her friendships, to her schoolwork, and to her camp life.

You know, it's really nice to know that I had the privilege to know Moriah, and I didn't actually just have the privilege of knowing her, I was able to introduce her to so many people. I introduced her to one of her best friends, Rebecca Eisen. I even apparently introduced her to my sister. It's nice to know that. And we all grew up kind of with the same people for many years at summer camp. One of the greatest things is that we only saw Mariah for a while one time a year, and so we'd always just anticipate, you know, we wanted to come back to camp to see Mariah, and it was really, really beautiful. And our CIT MIT year, there was kind of a group of us. It was me, me, Rebecca, Mariah, and a girl named Golda. And it was really nice. You know, as I was shooting this video, you tend to learn about yourself through others. You tend to learn about your grief through what other people say. And so that was quite eye-opening for me to really realize that. And I want you to take away something from this video. Well, we do have pictures nowadays, but the truth is pictures don't move. They don't speak that much to us all the time. The truth is our memory is more important, and memory is something we can easily lose, especially when we don't talk about it, think about it. Mariah died very young, and it's for us to, even if we had one sentence that we spoke to her or conversations, to remember that, to rekindle that too. It's my hope that with this award that's named after her, she's not just a person that it's named after, but we truthfully ignite a personality and the character that it's named after.