‘BORN AT PYRAMID’

Cornelius 'Neil' Bradt hard at work as Pyramid Life Center's new interim director

Cornelius “Neil” Bradt, shown with his wife, Courtney, said the opportunity to be interim director at PLC was “as an answer to what we have been looking for in a way to continue serving other people.” (Photo courtesy of Neil Bradt)

Cornelius “Neil” Bradt has been coming to Pyramid Life Center since before he could remember. In fact, the late Sister Monica Murphy, CSJ — one of the founders along with Father Bob Roos and Father Paul Engel — used to say that Bradt “was one of the people who was born at Pyramid.”

“My parents were some of the folks who helped out when Pyramid Life Center transitioned from what was called Pyramid Lake Camp back in the ’80s and became Pyramid Life Center,” Bradt continued. “So I have been vacationing at Pyramid Life since I was an infant.

“And then I started working as a dishwasher back in 2007 and stayed on throughout high school and college. I was lucky enough to be able to go to grad school, so I was there a couple of years between grad school, and now I work as a teacher and my summers have been free.

“I have been volunteering or working directly for Pyramid on and off again since 2007.”

After all of his years of volunteering, Bradt continued to gain more responsibility and was eventually named assistant director to Sister Monica.

That is why when the position came open to run the 750-acre diocesan retreat center that is located in Paradox on the shores of Pyramid Lake in the Adirondacks, Bradt was the perfect choice. Bradt, who works as a teacher in the Capital District as does his wife, Courtney, was named interim director in December of 2022 with the unanimous support of the Pyramid Life Center Board of Advisors, a group of long-time PLC campers and volunteers. 

“The Diocese is fortunate to have young leaders like Neil willing to step up when called to fulfill our mission of building community and growing our faith,” said Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger at the time of the appointment. “Pyramid Life Center is a special place to many people and knowing that Neil is someone who has many years of experience working at PLC and building friendships with the many people who visit is a strong attribute that he brings to this position. We’re excited to see PLC continue to thrive and make an impact on guests for generations to come.” 

Bradt and his wife saw the opportunity as a way to continue to serve the community.

“We are folks who are familiar with the facility, we knew what the job would entail and as teachers we would have the ability to actually run the camp when we are open,” Bradt said. “My wife and I talked about it and we thought it would be an awesome opportunity for us to continue a ministry that we had for a long time in terms of trying to serve our community. We had gone back and forth on different volunteer opportunities that we have had the last couple of years and when this became available we were both thrilled and saw this as an answer to what we have been looking for in a way to continue serving other people.”

With Opening Weekend on May 26-29 a little more than a month away, the anticipation is building. While the program schedule has the same great weeks — Camp Breakaway, Family Camp and Marian Lodge Reunion — which have been offered for years, Bradt is particularly interested in the St. Kateri Conservation Retreat (Sept. 15-17), which was new last year.

“They are a cool group and they are out of Long Island and this will be their second year,” he said. “They bill themselves as a ‘Catholic Ecology At Home Retreat.’ They come in to talk about how to bring elements of the natural world that you have all around you and intertwine that with your faith. That is one that I am looking forward to experiencing for the first time this year.”

Other than that, Bradt wants to keep things rolling in the Adirondacks.

“The thing that we are most excited about is to be able to continue a lot of the programs that have been running for a number of years now. Pyramid is great because we have a really large community of people who have been staying with us and volunteering with us for years and years,” Bradt said. “We have lots of times three, four generations of people that are coming in, staying with us for a weekend or staying with us for a week. The thing that we are really looking forward to is seeing how these groups have continued to change over the last couple of years.

“It is cool because they grow and develop. … We are excited to continue that legacy that we all have built over the last 35-plus years of families continuing to come back and continuing to choose Pyramid as a place to rest and rejuvenate.”