InfoAge
The Coast Star
Young volunteers travel to Camp Evans to restore history
By Dan Zomack


During the course of the last two weeks, a group of 13 youngsters from the tri-state area, as well as one from Florida and another from Canada, volunteered their time and energy, through a program called Landmark Volunteers, to restoring historic Camp Evans in Wall Township.
The teens, who were between 15 and 17 years old, chose to come to Camp Evans from over 50 other sites throughout the Unites States, from California, New Mexico, Colorado, Maine and a host of other states as well.
High school students apply to Landmark Volunteers, who review the applications and send a list of interested students on to the participating centers.
Landmark Volunteers is a nonprofit organization that provides high school students with volunteer community service opportunities through two-week summer and one-week spring programs at 52 organizations across the country.
Each participating organization selects applicants who they invite to take part in its summer or spring program.
“A lot of the kids are looking for volunteer hours for college programs,” said Cori Carl, the daughter of InfoAge founder Fred Carl, who was also the group’s team leader during its stay.
Ms. Carl is an InfoAge volunteer who dedicates much of her time to restoring Camp Evans.
Camp Evans, a former U.S. Army base that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was deemed surplus and the property has slowly been handed over to Wall Township as the cleanup at the site has crawled forward since the late 1990s. Portions of the property were also given to Brookdale Community College and the InfoAge Learning Center.
The base has a rich history and was home to Guglielmo Marconi and his experiments and was also used as a secret listening post for the U.S. Army during the Cold War.
InfoAge was founded in 1998 by Mr. Carl, a Wall Township resident. The organization’s purpose is to develop an interactive learning center focused on the information age technologies which had their beginnings at historic Camp Evans.
Ms. Carl said the kids “did a lot of painting,” as well as other activities that were aimed at restoring Camp Evans.
“We also worked on creating a multi-purpose room to have larger meetings there,” Ms. Carl added.
Another project the teens worked on was painting the buildings along Monmouth Boulevard in a camouflage motif, which is the way the buildings were originally painted during World War II, Ms. Carl said.
One thing the group spent a lot of time doing was clearing out underbrush from different areas around Camp Evans. “Certain areas of the camp looked like a jungle,” Ms. Carl jokingly stated, and said the kids did a lot of work cleaning the area up to make it look nice and neat.
“The volunteers learned a lot, worked real hard and made substantial improvements at Camp Evans,” Mr. Carl remarked.
While the kids were at Camp Evans for their-two week stay, they stayed in the manager’s cottage and prepared their own meals and cleaned up after themselves too, Ms. Carl stated.
“This year’s group was mature, a lot of fun, really hard workers,” said Ms. Carl. “I got lucky with a good group of kids.”
The teens’ stay at Camp Evans was not all about work though. They also visited some local attractions. Ms. Carl said that they received free passes to the Belmar beach for two days, went to a Lakewood BlueClaws game and went to Seven Presidents Park in Long Branch, where the head lifeguard, Mike Fowler, gave a presentation on the history of lifeguarding called, “Life-saving on the Jersey Shore.”

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