I finished my clinical assignments in mid-July of my junior year at NYU Dental School in 1958.

All the good summer jobs were already taken and it would be difficult to get any summer employment. My classmate Matty and I were in that same leaky boat - no jobs and two months before we returned to school for our senior year.

In previous years we worked as waiters in the Catskill Mountains. Not this year. Things looked bleak.

The telephone rang from an employment agency. A boys camp in the Albany area needed two counselors immediately. Matty and I were headed upstate on a bus the next day. A job! Wonderful!

Albany was hot as we waited to be picked up by the camp at the bus station. The red brick buildings which define Albany, baked along with us in the afternoon sun.

Finally the camp wagon arrived. We boarded and immediately started bombarding the driver with questions. Then he dropped the bomb on us, "The camp is closing in four days - diarrhea epidemic." What terrible luck. Our job would be over in four days.

The kids at the camp looked gaunt and the mood of the place was dire. We were assigned our groups of 11- and 12-year-olds and we set out to be great counselors even for a short duration.

The food was scarce and nobody seemed that they were hungry, even after a day of sports and exercise. It was an unhappy place.

On our last day at camp Matty and I went into the administration office for our paychecks. At first they refused to pay us for the four days, but they finally relented and we each received a check for $6.50. We laughed about it on our bus trip back to New York.

Incidentally, my check cleared and Matty's check bounced. For years afterward I felt very badly that I didn't split my $6.50 with Matty. It became an old joke between him and me.

It is too late now, 47 years later, as my beloved friend Matty passed on this year.