Friendships and Relationships

Journey Of A Camper On Drugs

Published on by Kathy Baker

D had fond memories of her seven summers as a camper at Maqua in the mid-60’s. After the first few years, she would stay for all four sessions. Her last summer at camp was spent as a kitchen aid in the early 70’s. She described herself as mischievous back then, but she got along with everyone. She still had friends who were campers and could not wait to return the following year.

“For some reason, the new director took an instant dislike to me. I do not know if it was my personality or something else she had heard. During a break between sessions, ten of us went back to M’s cabin where we all smoked marijuana, some for the first time. I’d tried marijuana previously and even had some at camp with me, but never smoked it in camp.”

“When I applied to be a junior counselor for the following season, the director denied me. I was devastated. I adored going there. I had the best childhood and Maqua was a big part of it. The relationships were so great and even the staff didn’t snub us as kids. I loved that we were doing stuff all the time. I had wonderful relationships with Dorthe and Beanie and others, and stayed in touch with many of them. Those relationships were a uniting force.”

“Maqua was life transforming for me. It was like a little dream come true. Going to the reunion in 2012 was very healing for me. I realized then what a loss I’d been carrying around all these years. I had assumed I would be coming back as a junior counselor after the summer as a kitchen aid. When I was denied, I felt like my arm had been chopped off. We all had so much in common and it wasn’t anything to do with our parents being friends or our friendships back home. It was about the special camp relationships.”

“The denial of the junior counselor position coincided with the beginning of twenty-five years of active addiction. By the age of fifteen, besides marijuana, I had already experimented with many different types of drugs. When I told some of the staff at the reunion, they told me they wished they’d known, so they could have helped. But, no one could have helped at that time.”

“Despite my addiction, I was always a good student. After receiving my Bachelor’s degree, I moved to California and tutored math at a community college for a while. Ultimately, I went to law school in California, still heavily into drugs, but I took the bar exam and passed it. I got high right after my swearing in.”

“Staying in school seemed like the easiest course since my parents were willing to continue paying for everything. I did use my law degree and ran a clinic for substance-abusing women, and also worked for the local Family Court restraining order clinic. I won awards for my pro bono work. I was telling myself I was a functioning addict until one day I realized I’d made an oversight in a situation that could have affected someone else’s life. So, I stopped practicing. My fallback was to return to school again for my Masters in Public Interest Law.”

“In the early 90’s, my father passed away. Because my Mom and I were so close, I moved back to Michigan. I was struggling, so I entered into grief therapy, which ultimately turned into substance abuse therapy. Eventually, I went to inpatient treatment at Hazelden and got clean. Now I am doing what I always wanted to do.”

“I have my masters in social work, work as a substance abuse therapist and most importantly, I’m in recovery. I just celebrated twenty years clean. Looking back over those twenty-five years of active addiction, there were many difficult times. I spent time in jail and came close to death several times. Basically, my life at that time was about using.”

“The trajectory of my life has been unusual, but I feel that I somehow landed on my feet. I believe I am more whole as a person and I understand that life is about relationships. It came full circle at the reunion and I realized the friendships I developed while at Maqua truly helped to shape my life.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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Confusions and Confessions–

Published on by Kathy Baker

 

“I was somewhat aware and in denial at the same time, while I was at camp and in those college years, of my sexuality,” admitted L.D, who was at camp in the late sixties. “I had a boyfriend, but wasn’t really all that interested in him. One of the other counselors eventually made me talk about it, but she did it in a nice way. I think they all knew at camp, but I waited several years before I came out.”

For some, like K.M., who was just a hugger during the same era, and had no confusion, it was the summer of awareness for her. “I loved that I could walk around camp with my arms wrapped around another girl or arms linked, appropriately, and no one cared. I could hold hands swinging and feel comfortable. I don’t remember ever having any girl crushes, but I do remember the summer there was a rumor about another girl liking another girl and I just never knew anything about those things. We just never talked about sexuality.”

One woman in the early sixties had applied for the job as a college student from an ad in the Bay City Times. Having passed her water safety instruction classes through the Red Cross, she felt she could write her own ticket for a summer job, knowing WSI instructors “were hard to come by”. Her degree was in physical education from a college in Illinois and she had been a counselor at a Girl Scout camp and a Pioneer Girls camp in the Poconos.

She felt her summer with her waterfront job was fine until the last day, when she alleged her director made sexual advances toward her. She was to help with the last day’s closing-up of Camp Maqua, but told her she refused to help her and if she said one word about it, she would report the incident to the Bay City “Y”. In a second interview, she felt she did the right thing not reporting, as she had not noticed the director had ever been inappropriate with the young girls.

“I didn’t know about lesbianism at that time. I probably should have reported her to the school system in Detroit, where she worked as a physical education teacher, but I never did. She was a cold, strict woman who you could not talk to. I was OK with my decision not to report her.”

She spent six weeks at Camp Maqua and then walked away, but as a professed introvert, she stated she had never been close to any of the other counselors. “The best part of that summer was working with the kids. I lived above the boathouse and would wander around and talk to different groups of kids. It was okay until the last day.”

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Gays And Girl Crushes—

Published on by Kathy Baker

K.W. knew there were crushes on counselors in the sixties and that many of the girls “would show you theirs if you showed them yours and they would giggle and dance around in their underwear, but it was a time when they didn’t talk about women liking women. My friend was a tomboy and there were many tomboys. We instinctively knew who they were and they were the ones we asked to climb the trees to get us things, just as we knew who the girly girls were. By the time I was in fifth grade, girls were popping boobs and getting their periods and we had our medical forms and our check ups and I’m pretty sure the camp nurse was a pretty important person.”

Alternately, J.B. was aware of the strong female friendships at camp, even during the co-ed years and realized looking back around 25% of the women might have been gay, which did not cause problems unless they broke up with each other. “It wasn’t a big deal and there was no sexual tension, but there were the tightest knit friendships made in the shortest amount of time at camp.”

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Not Out In The Open—

Published on by Kathy Baker

“I know there were girls at camp that had feelings for other girls and counselors, but it was a time that if you had those feeling, you kept them to yourselves. It is not so socially taboo anymore, but back then, you kept your feelings in check,” admitted A.C., from the late sixties and early seventies, who met her good friend at camp. She recalled staying up ridiculous hours talking to her friend in an intense and intimate way, admitting she was attracted to her as a friend.

D.R. had a crush on one of the counselors in the early seventies. “There was not a lot of talk about gay issues and I was a tomboy, but not gay. I wasn’t athletic or into sports, but until my brother came along, my Dad had me cutting the lawn and doing the sfuff with the dogs, etc. But, I can remember all the counselors were at a campfire and my three cabin mates went on a tangent trying to make me mad, saying things about (my crush). I defended her and then I started to cry and the counselors had to yell at them. I still don’t know why I did that.”

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Girls In A Girls Camp–

Published on by Kathy Baker

An all girls camp with female staff and female campers. Some may be inclined to think of it as a breeding ground for the type of stories that make headlines today. I found the opposite to be true, upon interviewing many women over the past few years, although many admitted to their own discovery of their sexuality or to innocent girl crushes.

Although the twenties hearalded a type of sexual revolution, the sixties marked an era that headlined such words as free love, gay rights, feminism, hippies, the pill and women’s movements. A large majority of the women who shared their stories were from the 60’s to 70’s.

M.J. began camping in 1933 and continued for eight years, aware that many of her counselors were indeed gay, “but I never had a problem with that, and just did not get mixed up with it.”

Certainly, girls like M.I., J.L. and G.J. were not the only ones who had girl crushes. It was the late forties and early fifties. Some were tomboys, but others shared sweet stories of having camp crushes on their instructors and counselors.

“There was a counselor I admired and I think that is why I wanted to be a C.I.T., so I could come back and hang out with her on the weekends when the kids were gone between sessions. I hated to leave her and I embarrassed to tell you, because you are the first person I have ever told, that I guess I had a girl crush on her. I was attracted to her. I hated for camp to end. I remember crying before my Mom would ever get to camp every year because I never wanted it to end.”

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