Directors, Counselors, Staff

Drinking—

Published on by Kathy Baker

“In 1972, Michigan became one of the first states to experiment with lowering the drinking age to 18, following the 26th Amendment, which had lowered the national voting age to 18. However, following a rise in drunk driving accidents, Michigan also became the first state to move its drinking age back to 21 in 1978.” (study.com)

The sixties and seventies at camp were not exempt from the issues that faced teenagers of the entire country. Lowering the drinking age meant that counselors could legally frequent the bars around the camp, and by the time the camp had closed, the age requirement went up again.

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Menses and Meanness–

Published on by Kathy Baker

The girls at camp were not always nice about that time of life when a young girl transitioned to a young woman. Coming of age was sometimes traumatic enough, especially if the girl was unprepared for the changes that came with her first menstrual period. Mix in a little un-necessary meanness and it doubled the shock.

“I know that my parents were delighted when I came home from camp one summer to find that I had lost weight from running up and down the steps to and from the lodge and my cabin. I was kind of a chubby kid,” said Chris Augustyniak (1963-66). “I remember the last year I was in Cabin 9 over the boathouse and there were eight girls in our cabin. In retrospect, she could be called a mean girl. There was another timid girl named Jean who had her second period while she was at camp. She was supposedly asleep and one girl started a discussion about this timid girl and I thought it was inappropriate, so I told them they should shut up. As it turned out, she was not asleep and she felt like I was her only friend. I still remember how it taught me to always stand up for people. Maybe because I was a Catholic in a small school—I knew there were cliques, but I just remember thinking that was what I should do.”

“The girl who lived across the street from me, Nancy, went to camp with me that first year (1951), and we were in the same hut. Now, Nancy was NOT my best friend. I had already learned that I could not trust Nancy,” said Janet Dixon. “At camp I learned NEVER to trust Nancy. I matured very early, and I had already had my first period before going to camp that first year. One day Nancy pulled me aside and said she had something important to tell me and I must promise not to tell anyone else. I promised. She said she had begun having her periods. She was very excited. However, when I told her that I had started my period too, several months ago, she was deflated. I guess she wanted to be first. She told me not to tell anyone, and again I agreed that I would not and didn’t! I would never tell anyone else anything so personal, so private and shared in confidence. About a week later, I was flabbergasted, when the counselor in our hut pulled me aside and admonished me for telling other girls that Nancy had started having her period. She said that Nancy said I was the only one she told and since the other girls now knew, I must have been the one who told them. I denied all of this, of course, but I didn’t feel the counselor ever really believed me. I then went to the other girls and asked them who had told them about Nancy. They all said the same thing. Nancy told them! I went back to the counselor and told her this and suggested she ask the other girls herself, but she seemed rather indifferent at this point. I think she figured out by then it might be better to stay out of things.”

One camper from the late fifties and early sixties had an unfortunate experience with one of the directors. “She was mean and rough and I was afraid of her. She embarrassed me publicly in an unforgettable way. What did I do? I hung some things to dry on some clothesline and apparently there was some residual blood stain on my underwear. Quite mean, right? She was night and day from ______!” (previous director)

Did mean girls or staff embarrass you in any way?

 

 

 

 

 

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Becoming A Woman At Camp—

Published on by Kathy Baker

One of Debra Osher’s firsts occurred at Maqua in the early sixties, but not in the usual timely manner of most girls. “Everyone had their period except me. I was fourteen and my Dad was a doctor and we were supposed to send in this medical form and it would have information on it. I knew everyone had their period, because I used to sneak into the Infirmary and peek at the records. So, I asked my Dad to please mark down that I had it, and he did, even though he knew I didn’t. Well, didn’t I get my period there and I had no equipment! I think I called my Mom a few days later to tell her. Normally, my Dad would have never done that, but he knew how much it bothered me

“I got my first period at camp and I was terrified! It took me awhile to figure out,” said Dana Foote (1974-77). “My Mom did not send anything with me to camp, so I was pretty scared and told my counselor. It was the summer after sixth grade. She took me to the nurse and I just recall being mortified, hoping none of the other girls found out.”

Kay Alcorn remembered one great laugh at her expense in the forties. “I was the only one in the cabin who was not menstruating yet. They teased me unmercifully. I was feeling inadequate and even worried that maybe I’d never start. One evening when I returned to the cabin in my light blue pajamas after brushing my teeth and washing my face, one of the girls said “Oh Kay, what’s that spot on the back of your pajamas?” Knowing that they were probably just teasing me I declined to look. But they kept it up. When I did look, I said, “Oh, I probably just sat on a bug!” They really laughed at that and never let me forget it, for indeed that momentous right of passage was a reality at last.”

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Smoking–

Published on by Kathy Baker

 

Helen Hasty recalled the clouds of smoke that billowed around the big tent behind the lodge in the early forties.

(“Smoke virtually rolled out of the couselors’ smoking tent!”) Some years smoking was no big deal and other years, the directors warned the counselors about smoking on the premises.

Lucille Greenwald (1947-50) had the same memory of the counselors sleeping in the tent behind the lodge and the girls were never allowed to go back there. “We would see some of them with bandaid boxes in their pockets, which had cigarettes in them and we thought it was terribly risqué.”

“I do remember the counselors had a tent behind the screened porch at the back of the lodge, where they would smoke their cigarettes and talk about the “ugly” (uncooperative) campers,” said Geraldine Folkert (1942-47), who learned to smoke at camp at the age of sixteen and became a social smoker.

Carla Schweinsberg (1945-52) was relieved not to be part of the round-up of naughty girls who got caught smoking in the bushes. Anne Obey believed the walks she took to smoke cigarettes was the most scandalous thing she did in the sixties, but admitted she never wanted to disappoint her director and they never smoked on canoe trips.

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Bra Or No Bra?

Published on by Kathy Baker

Every girl probably remembers the first time they had to change in front of someone other than a sister, step into a communal shower after a gym class, shop for their first bra, or the shock that someone could be the same age as flat-chested you and have the hugest breasts you had ever seen!

“I had never spent the night at anyone’s house. I knew no one,” said Geraldine Padgett (1954-56). “I had no friends at camp and the other girls were not from my area. One of the biggest things for me was changing clothes in front of girls! In those times, you didn’t even lounge in your pajamas and we showered alone. I had never dressed in front of people and I was very modest.”

“I do remember, just as my friends did, that we all wanted to be around when one girl was putting on her bra. Her boobs would fall into the cups and then she would just snap it on and pull up the straps. We had never been around girls who were not modest. I think we bothered her “laughed Dorothy Niedzielski (1946-47).

Pat Kula said the memory of her early forties bra story at camp still brings howls of laughter to her bunkmates that witnessed the same act of the girl with the biggest boobs stepping into her bra from the floor. There was not much room for privacy for the girl who was cups ahead of her flat-chested roommates!

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Rites Of Passage—

Published on by Kathy Baker

 

It was all girls and a safe place to talk, a place to give in to the innocent rites of passage, and share experiences only girls could relate to–that was camp. Shaving your legs, bleaching or cutting your hair, smoking your first cigarette, talking about sex, wearing a bra or not wearing a bra and getting your period for the first time were all firsts sometimes experienced at camp.

“We discussed lots of things about life at Camp Maqua,” said Anne Shutt (1961-66). “The birds and the bees talk took place in my cabin. I can remember the counselor came in and answered all our questions with the lights out. I think she stood outside and listened to what the questions were, and I look back and think that was pretty smooth. I don’t know who she was, but she had blonde hair.”

Discussions like that had been going on for years. Mary Jane Keschman (1944-54) recalled some evenings when the older girls answered questions from a cracker barrel. “We were allowed to ask any questions we wanted, whether it was sexual or otherwise, and the counselors would answer them for us.”

“I think I have a photo of some girls with me sitting on beds over there with the counselors. I wondered at the time, why would they want to talk to us, but we could ask our counselors any questions, even if it was about sex,” said Jan Mosier (1947-52). “So, I asked HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?”

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