In 1966, Michael Raab, an aspiring photojournalist, was an assistant to a commercial photographer in Greenwich Village. During the summer, when work slowed down, he happened to pick up a copy of the Village Voice and saw an ad that read: “Help wanted in racially torn city.” (That city was Beacon, and much of that racial tension had to do with the fight over urban renewal, which would ultimately see the demolition of over 200 homes in the predominantly Black West End and the displacement of hundreds of residents over the next decade.)
Intrigued, Raab called the number in the ad. The ad was placed by Rev. Thomas Moneymaker of St. Andrew’s Church, who was looking for help with his youth day camp. The church was offering camp counselors $20 a week plus room and board. “A few days later, I found myself walking up the hill from the Beacon train station to St. Andrew’s Church and one of the best summers of my life,” says Raab.
Raab spent a month working as a counselor in the camp in the West End. “It was very disorganized,” he remembers. “There were six counselors and we made it up as we went along—there were no organizational meetings or scheduled activities. The kids showed up and wanted to play basketball. Every now and then we’d try and get them to do something else.”
While this was going on, Raab would take occasional photographs of the kids at the camp in the style of his hero, Henri Cartier-Bresson, who believed in trying to capture a decisive moment, the fraction of a second in which the photographer recognizes the significance of an event and its precise composition. Raab ended up shooting a few rolls of film that summer. When he returned to New York City, he filed the contact sheets away and promptly forgot about them. Raab went on to work as a commerical photographer and open his own photo studio, which he ran for many decades.
Fast forward to 2023: Raab and his wife travel to Beacon, the first time he’s been back in over 50 years. While visiting, Raab met Diane Lapis, a trustee of the Beacon Historical Society. Upon hearing his story, Lapis asked him if he had any photos of his time in Beacon. “I didn’t remember having any,” says Raab. “But I went back through my archives and found a folder labeled ‘Beacon, NY, 1966.’ I was shocked.”
Twenty-five of those photos comprise the exhibition “Beacon’s West End Story: Summer of 1966,” on view in the Community Room of the Howland Public Library through March 3.
At the opening reception in February, Raab, now 82, reconnected with one of the boys from the camp, David Quill. They had their photo taken in front of a photo featuring Quill. Raab is still amazed by how kind the kids of the camp were to each other compared to the Bronx, where he grew up. “The main thing I remember about them was the strong sense of community,” he says. “These kids showed up every day, every one of them, and they were all there and helped each other and thrived in the community. It was a warm, caring environment. It’s just hard to believe these photos were taken almost 58 years ago.”
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This article appears in April 2024.
