Normandie Beach Resort

Historic site of the old Sysco Blast Furnace, Normandie Beach Resort is a magnificent historic property. Normandie is owned and run by Molly & Waldemar Kasriels whose hands on way of management makes you feel at home. The property is on a penninsula offering more than 1000 feet of waterfront on Lake Champlain. Guests stay in cottages, which used to house children when it was a children’s summer camp. Renovated in 2005, Normandie now has all the amenities for families, but kept all the toys from camp. Set on rolling hills, seperated from Westport, NY by a half mile dirt road, Normandie gives the feel of having gone far, far away from reality. Lodging Style And Amenities
The cottages are all newly renovated with satelite TV, air conditioning, lovely lakefront decks. Lodging includes all non-motorized activities: swimming, both beach and pool, sailing, windsurfing, canoeing, kayaking, pedal boats, rowing, fishing, tennis and championship golf less than a mile away. Breakfast is included with your cottage and is served lakeside at The Coco Cafe, often with Molly or Waldemar at the grill.

Season Open
Mid-May through Mid-September

Additional Services Available
Spa with massage, manicure, pedicure, facials and hair.

Lessons offered in Waterskiing, Sailing, Windsurfing and Tennis, also boat rentals.

WiFi throughout the property, fax, internet room, small library, volleyball, badminton, game room and work out room.

Rate Range
$208 double occupancy $40 per each child and $75 for each additional adult.
What Is Distinctive And Authentic To The Character Of The Region
Prior to Waldemar and Molly purchasing the property in 1970, the property was operated as Camp Champlain, a children’s overnight camp. Now, as Paul Harvey would say, here is the rest of the story…..

Los Angeles Times

August 16, 2003

Mr. Paul Lieberman

My uncle owned Camp Champlain in upstate New York and various relatives went there, or worked there, so it was a home away from home for me. But I could see that camp was not such a comfortable experience for some kids — early in the summer, in particular, it was not unusual to hear one or two in a cabin weep at night from homesickness

I never saw anyone as unhappy, though, as the boy we called Sherman, using only his last name. From the first day of camp, he wanted out, to get back home. We were 11 or 12, I’m pretty sure, but it’s been four decades, so the memories are hazy — though not my memory of the knife. That I’ll never forget. And the song, of course.

Sherman had never been to camp before he arrived at my uncle’s on Lake Champlain. He was the smallest boy in the cabin but made his presence known by reading us the letters he was sending his parents, telling them how miserable he was: “I wish you were here and I was there.” “The counselor plays the trumpet in the middle of the night and won’t let me sleep.” That sort of stuff. But the letters didn’t work. Sherman remained at the camp, and remained miserable, right up until the lunch hour when he took matters into his own hands.

We were at one of the long tables in the barn-like mess hall. He was sitting on my left. Another boy was on my right. They began arguing. About what I can’t recall. But, as I said, I’ll never forget the knife. Sherman picked his up and threw it. It hit the other boy square in the chest — OK, it was a dull butter knife, and it may well have been the thick handle that hit the boy. But he fell backward nonetheless and started wailing. I grabbed Sherman in a headlock and probably started pounding on him. Of that I’m not certain — but the headlock definitely. And the next day he was gone. They’d kicked him out.

I was amazed later when word filtered down that Sherman’s parents had asked if he could come back. But it was near the end of camp and my uncle wouldn’t budge. We never saw Sherman again.

Nor did we put two and two together when, in the next year or so, a man named Allan Sherman became the most unlikely of overnight celebrities.

A hitherto unknown TV quiz show producer, he was by his own account “a fat, ugly gargoyle,” an asthmatic who wheezed and “the worst singer in the world.” Yet in short order, his raspy voice produced three chart-topping albums by transforming familiar melodies into Jewish-themed spoofs. He scored his first hit with a takeoff on the French children’s tune “Frere Jacques,” his version making it “Sarah Jackman, Sarah Jackman. How’s by you? How’s by you?”

His third album, however, sent him to the peak of his success. Released in summer 1963, “My Son the Nut” included a song set to Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours.” Allan Sherman titled his version “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (A Letter From Camp).”

Hello Muddah, hello Fadduh

Here I am at Camp Granada

Camp is very entertaining

And they say we’ll have some fun if it stops raining

It’s about a boy who desperately wants to go home, at least until the end of the song, when he decides camp isn’t that bad after all, so “Muddah, Fadduh, kindly disregard this letter!”

I still did not make the connection until my uncle said, “You remember his son, don’t you?”

That album topped the charts through summer ’63 and Sherman performed with symphony orchestras around the country. He went beyond being just another guest on “The Tonight Show” — he filled in as its host when Johnny Carson was away. But when President Kennedy was assassinated two months after that summer, the public’s appetite for novelty humor rapidly waned. A decade after “Hello Muddah,” Sherman was dead, found alone in a Los Angeles apartment on Nov. 21, 1973, felled by obesity and emphysema at 48.

By then, I was out of college and the whole story — of the camp, the knife, the song — was part of my cocktail party repertoire. Whenever childhood summers came up, I sprung it. No doubt others imagined that their own camps could have been a model for Camp Granada, but I had the goods, the real thing, what radio’s Paul Harvey calls “The Rest of the Story.”

Yet every time I told the tale, it left me uneasy. I knew the episode I was playing for a moment’s entertainment involved the real troubles of a real little boy whose first name I could no longer even recall. I found myself wondering what had become of Sherman, and it was hard to imagine anything other than a sad, self-destructive life unfolding for him.

But it never occurred to me to find him, and find out, until this summer, the 40th anniversary of the song that became his father’s comic legacy.

In 1970, Waldemar Kasriels purchased Camp Champlain and created Camp Normandie. In 2005, he and his wife Molly closed the doors on the children’s summer camp and created Normandie Beach Club——–Enjoy your stay!

Fees
no
ADA Accessible
yes
Tours Are Offered
yes
Site is Child-friendly
yes
Site is Pet-friendly
yes

Location

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Normandie Beach Resort

Latitude: 44.1929745 Longitude: -73.4264374 Elevation: 129 ft

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  Normandie Beach Resort

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