Meeting new friends from diverse states and countries, other religions, different ethnicities plus the great canoe trips and hanging with staff members helped Sarah Smith’s (1968-70) independent formation. Sarah is the development director for the Center for Women and Families in Connecticut and works with domestic assault and crisis cases.
“For me camp gave me a wonderful sense of independence, just being part of a group and being able to express myself as a person,” said forties camper Suzanne Ruterbusch. “Many kids never got that chance and working there was just an extension of that independence. I have always been a huge lover of being in the woods. My first husband and I built a cabin in the woods in Grayling on the AuSable and before that, we took the kids camping in a trailer. I always felt closest to God when I was in the woods and it started at Maqua.”
The independence she gained at camp was the direct result of her days at Maqua (and other camps later), which gave Andrea Gale, pictured left, (1970+) the confidence to travel by herself. “My stepfather ended up working in Saudi Arabia and I went to a boarding school in northern California. I flew there by myself for three weeks, traveling for two days to get there with no fear. Later I went on trips by myself just to explore. Camp gave me the courage to do things in life.”
Kerry Weber also traveled post camping years in the fifties. “I think it was easy for me to go off to college. Attending camp at an early age allowed me to become very independent. I traveled to Europe at aged sixteen and six of us from Bay City also went to Finland and met up in Amsterdam. I summered one year with a family in Virginia, and I attended Sweetbriar Women’s College there. I truly loved going to Camp Maqua.”
As one of the youngest campers in 1965 or 1966 at the age of eight, Debbie Tweedie (above) was a CIT and left camp only because her family moved. As an adult, camping has played a huge part in her life. She had been a counselor at a co-ed camp after she left Maqua, and as a teacher, she has attended camps in Boston four summers in a row. She has taught all the songs from camping days to her students in vacation Bible school, and her own children attended camps. But perhaps her biggest camp memory was meeting her future husband at Camp Pickett in south Texas, where they were both counselors. (She also received her first kiss from him under the cross at that camp.)
“I loved camp and all of the outdoors and I later camped with friends, but never with my family. Camp gave me the confidence to be a leader. I recently received my Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and I teach, train, travel to different states and speak at conferences about professional development.”
“My cousin was shy, but I was not particularly,” said fifties camper Ilene Rogers (above).”Our Moms were close and we were together for family gatherings, but I think most parents wanted their kids to go away to camp. It was a great way to learn to stick up for yourself, become centered, and become aware of others and their lives. I wanted to be independent and I never thought of that as a negative. Camp made me think. It became easier for me to say what I needed for myself.”
Ilene worked for Quinn Evans in Ann Arbor as an architect and has written several books, including “Historic Preservation : An Introduction to Principles and Practice”, which is a widely used college textbook.