It is with both immense gratitude and a touch of sadness that we are this fall saying bon voyage to Gordon Grant, a.k.a. Gordo, who is stepping down from his role as Interim Assistant Director at Mondamin and sailing back off into retirement with his incredible wife Susan in Asheville.
When I came on as the new director in May of last year, the Bell family asked Gordon if he would consider helping us with the transition. Gordon was technically retired at the time, after a long and storied career in education, but had already come out of retirement just months before to man the helm of Peak Academy in Asheville, a public charter school for underserved youth. His plate was full, but he planned to hand that role off in June, and thus thankfully answered that he would gladly come to our aide at that time.
Gordon’s experience and aplomb in education is really quite unmatched, having worked in leadership roles at the Nantahala Outdoor Center, Asheville City Schools, NC Outward Bound, UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Education, and Principia College over the years.
That experience became incredibly valuable to us during the summer last year when he and I set out to hire two longer-term directors to chart Mondamin’s course for the next few years; he was instrumental in helping us place Aiden Shaw and Teddy Corwin as the new program director and assistant director, respectively. It was through Gordon’s leadership that we held the “Summit at Lake Summit” in July of last year, a veritable camp constitutional convention to which we invited almost 50 alumni, parents, and former staff to engage in a deeply existential conversation about the purpose and future of the camp.
During the fall, winter, and spring, Gordon helped us reconnect with camp families who had lost the opportunity to attend in 2023, to hire fantastic counselors and trip leaders for summer 2024, to organize and run a very successful canoe clinic to benefit the scholarship fund, to write thoughtful blog posts about the value of camp, and many many more things that ultimately led to a highly rewarding summer season. We all feel that the success of this past summer will be a foundation for the next century of excellence for the camp, and we have Gordon to thank for helping to make that possible.
Gordon is leaving his role as Interim Assistant director, but he will not be going away entirely; we’ll be calling on him to aide us with some off-season programing like the canoe clinics and staff training weekends, and he will be back on staff in the summer to do what he does best and what he is truly called to do: teaching young people on the rivers, lakes, trails, and peaks of WNC.
If you would like to reach out to Gordon, you can write to him at .
