The Currency of Kindness

Lessons from Stan Goldberg

This week, Stan Goldberg, the owner of my summer camp, passed away, and I find myself reflecting on the person who has been the single strongest role model in my work with children.

When people talk about Stan, they often mention how he remembered everyone's name. He ran a large camp for decades, so he knew thousands of children, and he remembered everyone even years after they stopped attending. While many people talk about it like it was an impressive party trick, it was so much deeper.

When I was eight years old attending camp for the very first time, anxious and away from my parents, Stan knew not only my name but my parents' names and my brother's name, years before Harry became a camper. He knew I was from Demarest, that I attended Hebrew school with another girl in my bunk, that I was interested in music. He even remembered that we shared a birthday, and when that day overlapped with camp, he met me at morning lineup to run around the flagpole together as girls’ side sang to us both. He didn't just know my name; he knew me. He took an interest in me and made it clear that he was invested in our relationship. He made me feel known, considered, and important.

I also have a talent for remembering names. If we've ever met, I likely remember your name, your face, and many other things about you. For years, I found this skill somewhat embarrassing and sometimes tried to hide it. If I knew you but you didn’t remember me, I worried I appeared overeager or fangirlish. I thought it was cooler to be nonchalant and to seem too important to remember other people. But Stan showed me that's completely untrue. People love feeling recognized and considered. It's a gesture of kindness to make others feel that way—to invest deeply in your relationships and to communicate that investment clearly to the other person. To know them and let them know they matter.

The other remarkable thing about Stan was how he ran Trail's End Camp with a group of his friends. Some back-of-the-envelope math reveals they were only in their fifties, but, at age eight, they seemed ancient; it felt like I was at a hybrid camp/assisted living facility, and I loved having their presence there.

When I was younger, I lacked many things that traditionally give kids social currency: my clothes weren't the fanciest, I wasn't athletic, and the boys didn't have crushes on me. Ordinarily, it’s easy for adults who work with kids to get sucked into typical social dynamics and intensify them. Unless they have substantial experience, counselors, coaches, and teachers often gravitate toward the cool kids. But Stan and his friends were experienced, and they did so much to reduce those dynamics. While they couldn't eliminate them entirely (nobody really can), they celebrated different qualities—kindness, effort, generosity, humor—providing a counterbalance that proved remarkably effective.

I developed close relationships with many of these adults, most notably Steph Axelrod, Stan's close friend who ran the pool. Steph and his wife Eileen were incredibly kind and attentive to me, like surrogate grandparents when I was away from home. We stayed close throughout my twelve summers at camp. When I got older, Steph let me be a lifeguard and swim instructor at the pool even though I wasn't a particularly good swimmer. I spent my time "on duty" guarding the empty pool and hanging with the Axelrods as they helped me write and edit my college application essays. Just like Stan’s remembering everyone’s names, these relationships made kids (especially dorky ones like me!) feel recognized, celebrated, and important.

The fact that Stan's friends dropped everything to join him summer after summer speaks volumes about who he was as a person. My mom attended Stan's funeral yesterday and mentioned that Steph spoke at it—a testament to true, deep friendship.

I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have known Stan. In my own work with children, I can only hope to be a fraction as impactful as he was on the lives of so many young people. What Stan taught me was that the greatest gift we can give others is to truly see them. In a world increasingly defined by casual connections and surface-level interactions, the depth of attention he gave to every child in his care was remarkable. May his memory be a blessing.

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Not a musical!