After nearly four decades, a reunion with a Crush camp leads to love

Lisa Hart and Kenneth Steuer met in 1973 when they were teenagers at an overnight camp. They reconnected in 2011 on a social media page for camp alumni.

Many Camp Sleepaway devotees maintain that the camp experience continues to provide lifelong benefits, and for Lisa Jane Hart and Kenneth Neil Steuer, one of them was a belated romance.

The two met in August 1973 at Farm Camp Lowy in Windsor, N.Y., a small camp that attracted mostly children from New York and New Jersey, whose parents appreciated that the place hosted no color wars. Ms. Hart was 13 and Mr. Steuer 15. He had a secret crush on her. She had a crush on someone else in her dorm.

But she commemorated it in her diary, but with reserve rather than passion. "Camp was good," she wrote. "I met Kenny Steuer. He's a good boy. He writes well for a boy."

The two corresponded for a while after camp, he from New York's Upper West Side and she from Tenafly, N.J. Inevitably, they argued over touchdowns.

Nearly 40 years later, thanks to a Facebook page created by Farm Camp Lowy alumni, the two reconnected when Mr. Steuer, in 2011, posted a memory from the camp: The night they had a student sleepover and he got a place for his bag sleeping area next to Mrs. Hart's. He also suggested in the post that he might still have a crush on her.

Ms. Hart, who was never married, is now 62 and is a leadership, career and transitions coach in New York. She saw the message around New Year's Eve and sent Mr. Steuer a message that simply said "Hello".

That was enough. Mr. Steuer, now 64 and an investment consultant in New York City, responded.

But life issues interfered for both. He had health problems and his marriage was coming to an end. She was dealing with a death in the family. They started talking on the phone in February 2012, but didn't meet until May when they went to Zabar's and then had a picnic with blankets in Central Park.

'I didn't think of it as a date, but when I left I was like, we have a really good connection,' said Ms. Boston University and a law degree from the University of California, Hastings. College of the Law.

ImageKenneth Steuer, pictured in the foreground, and Lisa Hart, in the background in knee-high socks, at Farm Camp Lowy in Windsor, N.Y., in the 1970s.

A few weeks later, Mrs. Hart's younger sister, who lived in San Rafael, California, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and Ms. Hart spent the next year flying between the ribs, balancing a new relationship and impending death. His sister, Alison Hart Schlosser, died in May 2013.

Mr. Steuer's life was also turned upside down. He left his family home, in Plainview, N.Y., in September 2012, finally finalizing his divorce two years later.

The two found solace in one in the other, but also felt restrained.

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"Lisa was always very, very clear," Mr. Steuer said. "She was not the person who was going to date a married man. It wasn't her. She wasn't a house wrecker."

But it wasn't just the rules that guided her. "I remember thinking, I think I falls in love with this guy," Ms Hart said.

They persevered and eventually their relationship blossomed.

In 2017, a few years after his sister...