05/30/2022
The “John Dam Technical Center” is the name given to a portion of the Graham Hall Pavilion in D-bar-A’s Pines Campsite. This honor was given to John Dam, a member of many training staffs, in 2010. Mr. Dam was heavily involved for many years on the Three Rivers and Mahican District Boy Scout training staffs, spent ten years on Okpik staff, staffed five Wood Badge and three NYLT courses.
John frequently did tech support for training, which included set up and tear down of wiring the Friendship Center, Graham Hall, and a couple of other pavilions at camp. After a few rounds of this, John decided to simply the process for training courses at The Pines, including Wood Badge and NYLT. He donated a PC, an AV switch, a powered mixer, four weatherproof speakers, and some other gear for use by Wood Badge and NYLT, and installed permanent wiring in Graham Hall. That project also included wiring a couple of new electrical outlets, speaker connections, rebuilding the projector shelf, and installing a monitor mount. This made the setup a matter of plugging a computer and the mixer into the new power outlets, running cables to connect everything – a computer, projector, and the speakers. These improvements reduced set up and tear down time from about four hours or more for one person, to less than an hour.
As an acknowledgement of this major project, the AV area in Graham Hall was named the “John Dam Technical Center” in 2010.
John attended C-08-01, staffed C-20-03, C-46-04, and C-13-06, was course director for C-46-07, and then staffed C-34-08 (an LDS course). He staffed NYLT courses in 2006, 2007, and 2008. In recent years John has primarily been involved in Haunted Forest and as a volunteer on the ranger staff at the ranch.
