I remember lying on a musty cot mattress on the floor of the Islanders unit house, summer after summer, listening to counselors lull us to near-sleep with the nightly reading of Cradle of the Deep. 

The “autobiography”, written by Joan Lowell in 1929, may have fooled some in the literary world, and certainly strung along the girls listening for many summers. The discovery, first by my father and then confirmed by other EIC Alumnas and then the internet, that Cradle was only a fabulous tale, was akin to learning that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are only fantasies. I was devastated to learn my heroine was a falsehood. 

But in fact, Joan lives on as a hero. Her tale allowed many of us girls to preserve our innocence through our imagination, believe such things could happen and one day we, too, might learn to spit a curve in the wind or curse for two minutes straight without repeating a word. It gave us permission to imagine such things long after we stopped believing in childish tales of bearded old men and larger-than-life bunnies. And the true life of Hellen Joan Lowell is nothing to scoff at. Born in 1902, she helped pave the way for women after her in film and in print. Cradle may have received the most notoriety, but she also penned two additional “accounts”: Gal Reporter (1933) and Promised Land (1952). 

May your memories live on, Joan, in the hearts and minds of campers past, present, and future.

— Tucker Hirsch (EIC Camper 1991-2001)