If the saying “all roads lead to home” is true, then there is a road somewhere in Taiwan that links back to North Carolina.

In 2023, David Bell came home from living in Taiwan to become Camp Director at Camp Mondamin, an all-boys camp in Tuxedo that his grandfather started more than 100 years ago.

Since Frank Bell Sr., known as Chief, opened the camp, the Bell family has overseen its activities and operations, but it wasn’t until recently that David rejoined the family business,” he said. “I grew up here and spent many years working as a seasonal employee, as a counselor. I spent some time after college as an assistant director, working with my dad who was the program director at the time. In the interim, I went to grad school and pursued a teaching career and just came back to it a few years ago.”

Camp founder, Frank Bell Sr., known as Chief.

 Now he is living in his childhood home with his own wife and children – the same house that Chief, who led the camp for 50 years, and Bell’s father, Frank Bell Jr., also lived in.

Bell said there were several reasons that he decided to come back to work at the camp.

“I think camp, like for many of our alums, was extremely formative in my thinking about education, and really made me want to pursue teaching as a career in some way, shape or form,” he said. “Having spent a significant number of years, over a decade, in the classroom … this really seemed like the right point in my life to come back and devote myself fully to the camp.

Bell's brother Andrew took over the camp when their father retired around 2012. In 2019, their sister Calla Bell Williamson returned to run the sister camp Camp Green Cove. When Andrew decided to retire in 2023, Bell was excited about the opportunity to work with his sister as director of Camp Mondamin.

The two camps, located near each other on Lake Summit and on about 800 acres of woodland, have a capacity of 190 campers each. Every summer 35 to 40 states and seven to 12 other countries are represented among the campers at Mondamin and Green Cove.

As a child, Bell attended camp as a camper and then he was a counselor in his teens. Joining the family business wasn’t pushed onto him.

“I think my family's attitude toward participation in the family business has always been one that very much honors each individual's desire to do what they want to do in life,” Bell said. “There was no expectation that we participate or take over the family business. That was up to us.”

While he lives on the camp throughout the year, that doesn’t mean he sits around and waits on warm weather so campers can return to their bunks.

He is often asked what he does the rest of the year.

“We get ready for summer, and there's a lot to do,” he said. “Things happen pretty quick when you get into May and close to opening day. I sort of divide the year-round operational staff, so that would include the office staff and the maintenance crew. Our biggest jobs are recruitment and enrollment. We have a lot of families who just sign up year after year, and that's great, and we have families who have been coming for three or even four generations. We are always looking for new families, new campers, so we do lots of recruitment. 

“Our second biggest job is, of course, finding the right staff for camps. We have lots of counselors who come back year after year. We have former campers who come and are excited to be on staff for the first time. We get great recommendations from those staff, they bring their friends and partners-in-adventure, but we're always looking for new staff, too. A third part is just upkeep of the facilities, or building new facilities. We usually have some roofs that need to be replaced. A couple of years ago, we replaced a very significant two-story dock that is sort of like a diving tower. This year, we're replacing an indoor climbing facility, and then there's always something that needs to be fixed around camp. And then the fourth part is operating the business. The business goes on, and there's always stuff to do with that.”

The camp hosts three sessions now, which is different from how the camp started. Back then it was an eight-week residential camp, similar to many in the United States, and that was the only choice. Now there are two-, three-, and five-week options. Campers aged seven to 17 attend the camp, with the younger campers often taking the shorter sessions.

To attract new campers, Bell relies a lot on word-of-mouth from alums and campers who have recently attended sessions. There are also 30 or so families who represent the camp in different cities across the country, mostly in the Southeast, and Bell will travel to their cities to hold in-person information sessions. 

It isn’t like the first season, when there were only 31 campers. In 1924, there were no buildings except a simple dining room and a wood stove kitchen. Campers and staff lived in tents and the eight-week fee was $150. Activities were hiking, riding, swimming, and canoeing.

Camp has changed through the years with the addition of mountain biking and rock climbing as potential activities for campers. Horseback riding isn’t as big of a draw as it once was, Bell said. 

“There are a lot of things that have stayed the same at camp. The emphasis on a strong in-camp program that focuses on both fun and quality instruction that leads to opportunities to get out into the wilderness for extended trips that are age appropriate has remained the same,” Bell said. “We get out on our own property for one to two days. We get out in the Great Smoky Mountains and the Nantahala Forest for up to six days at a time for backpacking trips. We do whitewater canoeing trips and mountain biking trips, and that has very much stayed the same.”

Conversations at family gatherings, especially with current and former camp directors in attendance, tend to delve into the family business.

While the two camps are separate businesses, they work in tandem. They have the same dates and rates for the sessions and their programs are very much aligned. 

“We have the same philosophy. There are slight differences in the way that we do things, but we work together very closely on both the programmatic parts of camp and also the business side of camp,” Bell said. “My dad and my aunt, who ran camp for 40 years or so themselves are still around and helping out in ways that they can, even though they're very much retired. We end up talking about the business a lot as a family. It's just sort of part of our blood and something we all like to do.”

As he continues the family camp business, Bell wants to continue with the mission that his grandfather started. He also wants to find ways to include families who may not have the financial resources to attend. To do that, the camp’s Alumni Association runs a nonprofit to raise funds for and distribute camper-ships to help campers.

“My hopes are that we can continue with our mission to expose campers to the great outdoors and all of the bounty and the experience of being in the wilderness and being self reliant to an extent, but also just knowing your surroundings and having that appreciation and respect for nature and for the environment,” Bell said. “I hope that we can continue our mission of helping boys become good at determining their own future that is self self motivation and self direction. I certainly hope the camp can become even more inclusive.”

For more information about Camp Mondamin, check out its website: mondamin.com.