Sparks Fly Between Two Happy Campers at an Alumni Weekend

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Sparks Fly Between Two Happy Campers at an Alumni Weekend

The objective of alumni weekend for Camp Ramah in the Berkshires, based in Wingdale, N.Y., is “to create ******* marriages and matches,” said Anna Claire Bessendorf, a former camper. And indeed, that’s how it worked out for her.

Ms. Bessendorf, who was 22 then, attended the reunion over Labor Day weekend in 2015, and on Friday night met Jason Seth Goldberg, who was 25. They hadn’t known each other as campers — they later realized Mr. Goldberg’s older sister, Carrie Goldberg, was Ms. Bessendorf’s counselor the summer of 2006 — but fell into easy conversation. Separating to go back to their friends, they pinky-swore they wouldn’t be strangers the next day.

Spotting each other at a keg party on Saturday night, Mr. Goldberg asked if she’d like to take a walk to the water fountain, a technique they both remembered from teenage days. “She called me out on it immediately: ‘Such a camp boy move,’” he said, laughing. “I loved being called out. I was like, all right, this girl’s got personality.”

The two made their way to the property’s most romantic spot, a deck overlooking Lake Ellis, where they shared their first kiss. “Having grown up at camp, that’s kind of the romantic dream,” Ms. Bessendorf said. “To have had my first kiss with my husband on the sun deck really brings it full circle.”

[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]

Both were living in Manhattan at the time, so they met up later that week for a stroll on the Battery Park City Esplanade. They fell in love on their second date, Ms. Bessendorf said, which began at a friend’s birthday party on a boat where they only spoke with each other. From there the conversation continued back on the Esplanade, then they grabbed drinks, then dinner, and finally wound up at a “dingy” club on the Lower East Side to see Mr. Goldberg’s friend’s band perform.

The date lasted 13 hours. “We just talked and talked, and we didn’t want to leave each other,” she said.

When they first started dating, Ms. Bessendorf resisted getting serious. “I wasn’t quite ready to get into the relationship that would lead to marriage at 22, but I knew that Jason was end game,” she said.

Both were building their careers. Ms. Bessendorf, 31, who received a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and public health from Brandeis University and a master’s degree in public and nonprofit management from N.Y.U., worked for the New York City government, where she worked in the mayor’s office and Department of Consumer Affairs, now known as the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. Mr. Goldberg, 34, who has a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Maryland, dove into television production, working on unscripted shows like “Beat Bobby Flay.”

Yet when the pair were spending an evening with Mr. Goldberg’s sister, the former camp counselor, in December 2015, Ms. Bessendorf prompted him to use the title of girlfriend.

In July 2020, they moved in together in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Ms. Bessendorf is now the chief of staff to Jennifer Gutiérrez, a council member from Brooklyn, while Mr. Goldberg recently worked as a producer of a documentary, “The Sixth,” with A24 Films.

On the morning of Sept. 29, 2022, the couple woke up to bangs and shouts. Firefighters ushered them to the sidewalk, where they watched as flames destroyed the apartment next to theirs.

The work to get the ***** under control damaged their own home so severely that they were displaced for six months. The experience inspired Ms. Bessendorf to write the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, now distributed by the Red Cross to help New Yorkers understand their rights after a *****, and create the Back Home Act, which protects tenants after a ***** or natural disaster, introduced by Ms. Gutiérrez this past spring.

Though they had put off plans for an engagement amid the pandemic and *****, by spring 2023, the couple felt they had delayed enough. Mr. Goldberg’s sister invited Ms. Bessendorf to an event space in Chelsea under the ruse of a work event. There, Mr. Goldberg proposed on a terrace with soaring views of the Hudson River.

Their wedding vibe was a no-brainer. “We wanted a weekend that felt like a camp weekend, like a bubble with our friends and family,” Ms. Bessendorf said. They were married Aug. 18, which is Tu B’Av, comparable to Valentine’s Day on the ******* calendar, by ****** Avram Mlotek at Someplace Upstate, a wedding venue in Marlboro, N.Y.

The wedding weekend offered their 140 guests plenty of ******* camp-esque activities, from Torah readings to lawn games, movie night on an inflatable projector and a bonfire.

At the reception, under a tent festooned with disco ******, Mr. Goldberg surprised Ms. Bessendorf with a serenade of “Nothing Can Change This Love” by Sam Cooke. “I have a bit of a reputation among my friends as a karaoke *****,” he said.

When friends screamed for an encore, Mr. Goldberg obliged with a rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “The Best Is Yet to Come.”

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Sparks #Fly #Happy #Campers #Alumni #Weekend

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up