I met Cam, or as his mother likes to call him Cameron, as a young buck at my very first Babb Family Association Reunion in 2001. We connected on an intellectual plane in a way that I don’t interphase with most people. He was one of my drinking buddies through that reunion. We met at a bar next to the hotel nightly and traded drinks and stories. We were amongst the youngest of the attendees and wanted more than an early dinner and going to bed by 8pm.

We were, in course, joined by the other youngsters of the group and had a mini club going by the end of the reunion. Most of these people became leaders of the Babb Family Association in the coming years.

Cam wasn’t so interested in the family history. This might have been a result of him having known it from such a young age. He was ostensibly there to support his mother, Penny Chaboudy, that he adored. Penny was the current President of the Babb Family Association, and he was there by conscription, of course! But he took to his job well and never complained in the slightest. Such is the life of the child of an avid Genealogist!

Regardless, we shared several nights of drinking and deep conversations that I treasure to this day. More than 2 decades have happened since and, in my mind, he was always this young man with a gift for conversation.

As I recall, he also came to the 2004 Reunion in Greeneville, TN. Penny was in the hallway explaining the “modified Henry system” to someone and for some reason he came to tell me that she was telling people that people who had letters in their designation could return to numbers in a certain situation. She was helping someone sort out their place in the tree. You don’t need to understand the Henry system, or its modifications, but I told him, “this should give you great joy! Tell your mother that she is wrong!”. LOL

I have no idea if or how he conveyed that back to her, but I sent him with my copy of Jean’s book that explained the system. It was invented for a day before modern computing and is no longer relevant in today’s world. However, all of Jean’s work used the system to sort out the Henrys, the Williams and the Johns that proliferate our tree. So, I leave the numbers in the tree as a tribute to Jean, but also as a point of reference to eliminate confusion.

Well, I’ve aged 22 years since 2001 and somehow, he hadn’t, at least to me. I’ve not seen or talked to him again since that reunion. I have kept in touch remotely through conversations with his parents Butch and Penny, who I also adore to no end!!

While we had an intellectual connection, this was in a day long before Facebook. There was simply no way to easily keep up with people back then. We lost touch after the reunion and never happened to cross paths again.

Penny is a mainstay in the Babb Family Association and had orchestrated a number of Babb reunions. She is one of the earliest members and survives to tell the stories of our early days. We can count in our ranks less than a handful of the founders of this great organization that are still with us. I myself lean on them for the deepest intelligence about our US roots. This is why I reached out to Penny this week.

As I prepare for our 2024 reunion, I have been scouring the notes left by my predecessor Jean A. Sargeant. The family association was last in Winchester in 1995 and Jean made a point in the next newsletter of thanking Penny’s entire family for their support. This included Cam and his brother George.

I saw the references this week and wrote to Penny to make sure I understood the landscape of Winchester. I was shocked to find out that this man who was 9 years younger than myself had suddenly passed from a major heart attack just over a month ago. We aren’t supposed to lose the ones that are younger than ourselves!

I don’t have a picture of Cam from 2001, so I found the cover picture on his memorial page. This is as close as I can get to what he looked like when we met, though I’m certain that a dozen years may have passed by then.

His memorial service was today, and I wanted to share just a tiny snippet of his life story. I’ll always recall us sitting at that booth in that bar that I can’t name next to a Holiday Inn in Portsmouth, NH.

Rest in peace dear friend!