Coming Home to Community: Ted ’80 and Teresa ’76 on Camp K

Every Labour Day weekend, KIS alumni gather in Pennsylvania for Camp Kirchenwald, known to the community as Camp K—the longest-running and largest KIS reunion in North America. For generations of former students, it has become an important annual tradition: a weekend of familiar faces, old stories and plenty of laughter, but also something deeper that brings people back year after year. Camp K offers the rare opportunity to return to a community where alumni feel immediately understood, regardless of how many years have passed since they left Kodaikanal. More details about the reunion can be found at www.kodaireunionusa.com.

This year, we spoke with Ted (1980) and Teresa (Class of 1976), who have helped lead the planning and volunteering behind Camp K, about why they continue to give their time to the event and what keeps them connected to the KIS community. Their reflections reveal something much larger than a reunion. They speak about belonging, identity and the extraordinary bonds formed during childhood that continue to shape people's lives decades later.

For Ted, returning to the Kodai community was particularly significant. After leaving school and returning to North America, his connection to Kodai had gradually become more distant. It was not until he began attending Camp K that he rediscovered what that community meant to him. Coming back, he says, allowed him to reconnect with a part of himself that he had not fully realised he was missing.

"I found myself again," he reflects.

Camp K became a place where he felt comfortable and safe, a place where he could simply be himself. He describes the gathering as a kind of release, somewhere people can arrive and let go of the pressures and expectations of everyday life because they are surrounded by people who understand something fundamental about where they have come from.

That understanding is rooted in the particular experience many KIS alumni shared. For generations of boarding students, childhood involved separation from parents and families, often across great distances. Communication was more difficult than it is today, with letters and occasional phone calls providing the main connection to home. In that environment, classmates became much more than school friends. They became the people who shared everyday life, difficult moments and the experience of growing up together.

Teresa describes her classmates in exactly those terms. They became her family. Even now, decades later, she speaks of them as her sisters and brothers. There is something deeply reassuring, she says, about being part of a community where people have known you through so many stages of life and continue to accept you with all your strengths and imperfections.

Ted makes a similar observation about the intensity of boarding-school friendships. Living in close quarters meant that classmates often knew one another extraordinarily well. They saw each other at their best and worst, through moments of happiness, difficulty and growing up. Those relationships created bonds that were different from ordinary school friendships and, for many, have lasted a lifetime.

Perhaps this is why Camp K is about much more than reconnecting with people from one's own graduating class. Alumni arrive from different generations, countries and backgrounds, and yet there is often an immediate sense of familiarity. Even when people have never met before, they share the experience of having called Kodai home.

For Ted, the weekend has become something of an annual reset. He describes Labour Day weekend almost as a New Year for the community: a time to gather, reconnect and begin again before returning to the routines of everyday life. It is a chance to step away from the outside world and spend time with people who require very little explanation.

The event itself reflects another quality that both Ted and Teresa feel is central to the KIS community: a willingness to participate and give back. Camp K depends on alumni volunteering their time in countless ways, from organising and setting up to cooking, cleaning and leading activities. Ted and Teresa have taken on significant responsibility for planning the event, but they are quick to point out that Camp K works because people step forward and help.

For Ted, volunteering is a straightforward way of giving something back to a community that has given him so much. His involvement is not simply about organising an event; it is about helping to sustain a space that has been meaningful in his own life and making sure that others can continue to experience that same sense of connection.

Teresa shares the same philosophy. One of the things she loves about Camp K is that people do not need any particular qualifications or expertise to get involved. There are always things that need doing and always opportunities to contribute. As she puts it, "you just have to wanna help." That willingness to participate makes the weekend more enjoyable for everyone and reinforces the sense that Camp K belongs to the community rather than being something simply organised for them.

This spirit of participation is also why both Ted and Teresa would like to see more younger alumni attending and becoming involved. Younger generations bring new energy and perspectives to the gathering, while also becoming part of a much longer story. Camp K provides a rare opportunity for alumni of different ages to spend time together, share experiences and hear stories from generations of Kodai students whose experiences may have been very different, but whose connection to the school remains remarkably similar.

There is something particularly special about watching those generations mix. Younger alumni can listen to stories about a Kodai they never knew, while older alumni have the opportunity to see how the community continues to evolve. The shared experience of attending KIS provides an immediate bridge between people who might otherwise have little in common.

For those who have never attended, there can perhaps be a temptation to think of Camp K as an event primarily for older alumni or for people who already know one another. Ted and Teresa's experience suggests something very different. They describe a community where newcomers are welcomed, where the person sitting beside you may begin the weekend as a stranger but leave as a friend.

This openness is part of what makes the Kodai community so enduring. Alumni carry their experience of KIS into very different lives and different parts of the world, but many retain the same sense of connection to the people and values that shaped them. Ted reflects on how living in an international environment changed the way he understood the world. Returning to Canada after Kodai, he was struck by how much broader his perspective had become. Kodai had taught him to see beyond national boundaries and to understand the world through the people around him.

For Teresa, Kodai was equally formative. She speaks of the confidence she gained and of becoming a different person because of her experience there. But perhaps the most important thing she carried with her was the community itself—the knowledge that there were people in the world who had known her from childhood and would continue to be part of her life.

That is ultimately what Camp K represents. It is not simply an opportunity to look backwards or reminisce about school days. It is a living example of a community that continues long after graduation. It is sustained by alumni who show up, volunteer, share stories, welcome new faces and make sure that the connections they inherited are passed on.

For younger alumni especially, there is an invitation here. The KIS community does not end when you leave school, and Camp K offers a chance to discover what that community can look like in adulthood. It is an opportunity to reconnect with old friends, meet people from different generations and perhaps find relationships that will become part of your life in ways you cannot yet imagine.

And, as Ted and Teresa remind us, it is also an opportunity to give something back. The community that so many alumni value today exists because generations of people have been willing to invest their time, energy and care into keeping those connections alive.

Camp K is one expression of that commitment. It is a weekend built not just on memories, but on participation, generosity and the belief that the bonds formed at KIS are worth carrying forward.

For those who have never been, perhaps it is time to come and see what it is all about. You do not need to know everyone. You do not need a particular role. You simply need to come with an openness to be part of the community.

Sometimes, as Ted discovered when he returned to Camp K, giving yourself the chance to come back can also mean finding your way home.