By Gretchen Wing

Spotlighting Julie Van Camp in 800 words is like trying to explore the Grand Canyon in an hour. Her passion for education runs deep, but intriguing side trails beckon: sailing, family history, mountain climbing, writing, travel and community building. Luckily, all Julie’s trails lead in the same direction: empowering the next generation.

Julie’s adventurous style belies her roots in what she calls the “should-do generation” – as in: “You should do this …”

Having left her native Iowa for college in Colorado, she returned two years later to receive her journalism degree from the University of Iowa. But Julie soon began pushing boundaries. In an exchange program with the Soviet Union in 1958, 21-year-old Julie was secretly hired by the Associated Press to take photographs and write about Russian life.

“I only got stopped once, and they didn’t do anything to me,” she muses, as if the adventure hadn’t been a potential Cold War headline.

The Russian trip brought Julie together with Robert “Rip” Van Camp, and the two soon married. True to her generation, Julie followed her husband’s job to California, New York, and Connecticut, where they had three children, then to Massachusetts. Although she quit her newspaper-writing job, Julie was no traditional housewife; she and Rip took their kids backpacking from the start.

“We used to teach classes in family backpacking, the five of us,” Julie remembers. “We used to say, ‘Leave your three T’s behind: television, typewriter, and telephone.’”

Later in life, the Van Camps took their grandchildren camping, as the spirit of those classes became their theme: find something empowering, then pass that power on to others.

Julie followed this model with her own education. When her kids reached their teens, Julie earned a master’s in criminal justice from Northeastern University. Julie’s research on experiential legal education with middle schoolers led to a new career: director of a law-related education program.

“Next thing I know, I’m starting 69 programs in the district courts of Massachusetts,” she says.

Fundraising and writing, two mainstays of Julie’s future, propelled the program, as Julie procured grants and wrote the textbooks herself.

In the ‘80s, Rip’s career took him to Winston-Salem, NC. Once again, Julie followed, unenthusiastic about living in the south. But she used her Massachusetts experience to found the National Center for Research and Development in Law-Related Education through the Wake Forest University School of Law, helping teachers to develop creative curricula in law and citizenship. Each state nominated two teachers to attend the training. Christa McAuliffe was nominated; the lesson she planned to teach from space is in CRADLE’s book.

At age 50, Julie outpaced her adventurous family: she took up mountain climbing.

“They were not into it, but I said, ‘I’ve gotta go,’” she recalls.

After training at Lou Whittaker’s mountaineering school, Julie summited Mt. Rainier, then immediately aimed for loftier heights. With Mountain  Travel, she went to Everest Base Camp. Thirty-six days of no contact with the outside world worried her family, but the thrill was worthwhile: summiting 22,000-foot Mt. Mera.

Her Nepalese guides also introduced Julie to Buddhism.

“They were so calm, so peaceful … They had something I didn’t have, in terms of my faith, and it changed my life,” she says.

Buddhist meditation, along with the Lutheran church, now helps Julie stay centered in her busy Lopez life.

Both Van Camps used travel as a launchpad into philanthropy. After having visited and purchased property in St. Lucia, they eventually sent their maid’s daughter to college, then created a scholarship for local kids. After a trip to Bhutan, they helped finance their young guide’s education at the University of Texas.  And some years after climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, the Van Camps funded a scholarship for a Kenyan girl.

“It unfolds … it finds us. It’s something my husband and I really believe in,” she says.

Julie also maintains a scholarship for kids from Holstein, Iowa. Her journalism background remains vibrant. A month with a herding family in outer Mongolia in 2000 led to a freelance article in the “Christian Science Monitor.” Digging into family genealogy resulted in an award-winning, independently-published book, “Searching for Ichabod: His Eighteenth-Century Diary Leads Me Home” in 2009. Now Julie is learning to pass the torch of archivist to other family members. Since retiring to Lopez in 1990, Julie has continued to immerse herself. Helping to build Lopez Center has been her greatest local achievement, but her involvement has included Hospice and Home Support, Lopez Community Land Trust, the Children’s Center, and Lopez Island Housing Options – only a partial list. Recently, though, Julie is learning to say “no” when asked to help with another fundraiser.

“I don’t feel guilty about it anymore, because there are new people who can step up to the plate,” she says. “This community is amazing; people give what they can give.”

Julie Van Camp knows that mindset.