Knowing your bunk-mates or having a friend or relative at camp during the session was often the best security blanket needed for first timers who felt the pangs of homesickness. Marcia Michelson had three older sisters in camp in the early sixties and made good friends while there. Sisters Barb and Sue Utter convinced Jane […]
Month: November 2016
Homesickness–#4
Susan Ward managed to convince her parents in 1961 to take her home when she attended camp by herself, but the following years were more enjoyable when her sister also camped. Many of the campers had their fears eased by the mere presence of cousins, sisters or friends, despite many of them not sharing cabins. […]
Homesickness–#3
Lois Levine recalled her gorgeous wardrobe as one of the highlights of going off to camp as a ten-year old Jewish girl in 1948, because her clothes allowed her to fit in. Bunking in with eleven-year old Gentiles, on the other hand, made for a “dreadful, miserable unhappy experience”. Mean girls, perceived prejudice, and homesickness […]
Homesickness–#2
Young girls who were on the receiving end of the kindnesses during their bouts of homesickness remember the methods that worked. Sally Harris (late forties) had fallen and cut her leg very deeply and had to have stitches. “The nurse from camp was very nice and she let me be with her and was so […]
Homesickness–#1
“We used to have homesick campers, but like everything else in the world, the words keep getting changed, so now the camper who used to be homesick is lonely”, wrote director Barbara Haggart in her report in the early seventies. She suggested counselors look for these symptoms—poor appetite, wandering off alone, and stomach-aches and headaches […]
Boathouse Cabin Envy–
Jan Mosier and Geraldine McDonald had memories of cabin three, which was renamed “Sleepy Hollow” in the fifties and although Senior Village was the furthest from the lodge and was a highly desirable spot, no cabin created envy more than the one atop the boathouse! Carla Wilhelm, Helen Hasty, Yolanda Erickson and Sally Harris had all […]