Blue Tree: Branching Out, Finding Home

I’m quite attached to our home at Bryn Mawr College – Radnor Hall. It’s on the main lawn, but tucked to the side just a bit; a comfortable nook, carved out – it seems – for Blue Tree. It sits away from the larger dorms, and it neighbors the campus center, café and bookstore, a convenience not to be overlooked. Radnor holds just the right number of girls and staff to create a community that is close and lively. Its setting strikes the right tone, and its size suits us perfectly.

This summer, we are growing; we are branching out…

We’ve added Emory (GA) and Smith (MA) to our locations. Smith is a stunning liberal arts campus in a beautiful area of Massachusetts. Nestled aside a charming town and organized around residential houses rather than large dorms, it is a small campus with outstanding facilities. The town is steps away, and the backdrop is breath-taking. It is a perfect fit in many ways similar to Bryn Mawr.

Emory, on the other hand, has a large campus in a leafy, in-town Atlanta neighborhood. The city is a wonderful, Southern, and the campus is dense and active. Because of its size, where we live there – where we make our summer community – needed to impart just the right tone.

My father attended Emory, living in the SAE house on campus. He managed the house for two years, and later taught at Emory. He and my mother bought their first house just a mile away from campus. Atlanta is my home town. When I approached Emory about bringing Blue Tree to campus, one of the available residences was the SAE house on fraternity row.

I called my father – could he imagine that after all these years, his daughter’s all-girls camp would take up residence in his tenderly cared for fraternity house?  However, I discovered on my campus visit, that it was a bit the worse for wear these days. (I chided my dad gently about this, as he admitted to having led pledges in regular Saturday morning power-sanding sessions of all the hardwood floors). I was sentimentally smitten with the idea of bringing Blue Tree to the SAE house. But it wasn’t a perfect fit. Another option – right down the road – was just right. This summer, we’ll live in the Sigma Chi house, a small brick home with a kitchen and a driveway and a yard, right on campus. It’s smaller than our other residences – at only 24 students and 8 staff – but it sets the right tone, balancing a campus of Emory’s size. At the end of the day, the Blue Tree community returns to the intimacy of a home, and the community that is their summer family.