1950’s

Camp As A Slice Of Life—

Published on by Kathy Baker

Learning to get along with people at camp was an integral part of the whole camping experience. Thrown together in a cabin with seven others, or working beside counselors of different walks of life and ages made for interesting and sometimes challenging dynamics. Camp was like a microcosm of the world and a great place to learn how diverse a group of women can be!

Carolyn Waits, pictured above, insisted all the skills she learned at camp in the mid-fifties in archery, riflery, swimming, and boating contributed to her confidence as a young woman, as well as relationship building. “When you are in a situation where you have to get along with a lot of people and especially an environment without your family, you learn. I had good lessons in getting along and put them to use when I worked with NASA as a manager on the Hubbell Telescope. When you have so many different people working on a project like that, you have to get along.”

“Camp Maqua taught me to get along with other people. There was never any competition among the girls. The counselors did a fabulous job making sure of that,” said Mary Hewes (1946). Patsy Walsh (1938), who was an only child, also felt camp taught her to be with other girls and older girls, as well as conformity to rules and regulations. Audrey Delcourt (1968-69) learned skills that helped her work with people, especially when she began to teach college kids.

“For a girl like me who was introverted, camp grounded me into a natural world.,” said Kim Wynne-Parry (1963+) “I had the ability to relate to other girls in life and meet girls from all over, not just Michigan. The college girls were role models and they must have chosen them wisely because they had much to offer and emulate. It was a unique experience that I could not duplicate for my daughter. I am so grateful for my parents, who sent me there, I am sure, to experience that.”

“I had the greatest childhood every at camp,” said sixties camper Dawn Sohigian.”I cherish the memories and friendships with girlfriends. I still do sleepovers and Kathy, Missy, Kim and I sing the camp songs and know all the words. Camp taught me to be a good person. I developed bonds with women and they made me a better person who thought of others. Patenge was the best. We looked up to all those girls.”

“When you go away for a summer, all of a sudden it teaches you to adjust to new situations and to get along. Just living with others, not having your family around, and even not having your parents there to protect you, it is a very rewarding experience,” admitted Susan. Kiltie (1960-68) “ Camp Maqua was a wonderful place to go in the summer.

Pamela Hartz  (1966-75) had two career paths after she left Maqua. One was teaching special education and the other was counseling older adults and working with marketing and communication. “It is fascinating that both my careers were primarily influenced by connections and the communications of being with women. I was always more comfortable relating to other women.”

Socially, camping in the sixties helped Cindy Morrison, who feels like she can now command control of a whole room in the restaurant business. Alternately, if she is put in a room with a few people, she develops stage fright. “I was always the last one to volunteer to do a skit in the lodge, but camp taught me to get along with everyone, which I still do.”

Pat Kula (!946) learned skills she didn’t know and eating and living together with other girls were new to her. Lucille Greenwald (1947-50) learned to get along and to do her share. “Even though I had always gotten along with people, we learned to take turns.”

Dorothy Bonnen (1942) felt her timidity was lessened by learning to live with other girls, which in turn allowed her to become more friendly. Jennifer Fenton (1971-78) now feels like a well-rounded person and although camp sometimes positioned her into situations that were not always comfortable for her, she developed into a team player at camp and in life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Camp Friendships–

Published on by Kathy Baker


The friendships of camp often began before sessions even started!. Many knew friends from school or had cousins who attended at the same time and numerous women stayed in touch their whole lives after meeting new friends at camp.

Young girls Helen Hasty (1943-50) met at Camp Maqua would go on to become some of the best friends of her life, including Bernie Van Pelt. They shared the same sorority and Helen stood up at Bernie’s wedding. “It was truly a remarkable place. I am so happy my Mom had the foresight to send me there. It enriched my life and played a large part of my growing up years. It was a happy, peaceful place and everyone seemed to get along”,

“Everybody I talked to about camp thought it was special,” said Audrey Graff, who began in 1948. “It was life-changing and Maqua was not an ordinary camp. I was a counselor in college at another camp, but it was not the same experience.  There was something intangible about Maqua—a feeling of community and interrelationships. It was a wonderful way to spend the summer. I made idyllic friendships and I think the wonderful spirit at Maqua came from the top down. There was always such a spiritual feeling. The whole atmosphere at camp was positive. I had a sister who died of degenerative disease at eight and it had been an agonizing few years. Maybe camp made a difference–to be with happy people, happy counselors—it just added to me having a good time.”

“In sixth grade, Mardi Jo Link and I became inseparable friends, “ said Michele Patterson (1971-76). “ I am mentioned in her book “The Drummond Girls” as Mike, not Michele. I camped every year with her. One parent would drive us up and another parent would pick us up.”

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Camp As A Family Tradition–

Published on by Kathy Baker

Aside from the wonderful experiences and skills the girls learned at camp, many were so enamored with their adventures, they made sure their kids attended a camp.

“Camp was definitely one of my top life highlights and memories that I have ever done, “ said sixties camper Holly Foss. “It was always the highlight of my year and I cried when I had to leave. There was so much bonding and it was a fun escape from living, just being outdoors and laughing so much. It was an absolute joy.”

“The confidence factor, not from the survival but the skills I learned—like sailing and canoeing and the backpack trips. I would never have done that otherwise. There was a sense of accomplishment. It is hard to know whether I would have felt that if I had not gone to camp. The girls made lifelong friendships. I know if there was a reunion right now that I would be instantly back to those days with the girls I went to camp with.”

“I live in Colorado now and there is not much of an environment for canoeing or kayaking, but when I am in Michigan, I try to fit that in. My daughter is thirteen and I send her to a Y camp in Michigan and I encourage her to do the overnight trips. I cannot wait for her to come home each summer and share those experiences with me. It is similar to Maqua, and had it been still open, she would be there.”

“I loved the arts and crafts and the decoupage boxes we made in the Craft Hut. We would beat them up and then decoupage them,” said Val Van Laan (1965-70). “I liked the whole experience at camp. Learning to swim, boat, singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Rise and Shine” with all the hand motions in the lodge. That’s why I sent my kids to camp and why I loved going to the scouting “Mom and Me” camps with them.”

Anne Shutt (1961-66) had one son and two daughters and admitted she tried to find a camp like Maqua to send her children to. One daughter was the assistant director for a Michigan camp for fifteen years. In addition to those lasting days influencing her life, she also continued her love of the outdoors with a cabin on the north branch of the Au Sable in Grayling. After camp, Anne attended an all-girls boarding school and had a great time. “You recognize who you are at camp. It was such a great time. Camp just let me be me!”

Kathy Krohn’s camping experiences at Maqua in the third through sixth grade (1965-1968)  were so memorable, that she continues to this day reading books about camps, and even sent her son to a camp as natural as Maqua, so he could have similar good memories. “I needed to share what Camp Maqua was to me—a single gender camp where most people did not know who you were, or where you came from or what you had. I did not want him in a fancy camp. I wanted a campy camp, so he went to the same one my father attended as a child.”

The camp influenced Amy Falk’s love of nature in the seventies and the simple existence, which heightened the importance of camp so much so that she sent her kids to real camps to continue the outdoor fun. “I thought it was great to be thrown together with different kids to enjoy the same things and get away from our families.”

Some. Like Pat Rehmus, (1962-65) who had triplet boys, wanted them to go to camp, but they didn’t want to go. Finally, two of them attended a camp in Lake Tahoe and the third homebody stayed home, but she found the cost of camps out west were outrageous.

“In those days camp was different. It helped mold me for sure. Just getting away from home and not being homesick was formative. It gave me self-confidence, where I could make decisions in a larger community. We had to listen to our counselors, but we had a lot of freedom, even to choose our activities.”

Carla Schweinsberg decided to send both her girls to camp, since she had such a great time in the fifties. “Where else can you all get up as a group, eat as a group, and have fun as a group besides camp? It is a place where we all learned to get along with each other and I thought it was the greatest thing in the whole world.”

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Camp Was A Gift–

Published on by Kathy Baker

Diane Dudley(1957-63) was one of the writers for “The Loon” and saved many of her copies.  Her time at Maqua was very influential, and her love for the woods influenced her to continue living in the woods to this day. She sent a passage from a book by G.K. Chesterton from one of his short stories-”The Sins of Prince Saradine”, from the book “Father Brown—The Essential Tales”.

“Father,” said Flambeau suddenly, “do you think it was all a dream?’ The priest shook his head, whether in dissent or agnosticism, but remained mute. A smell of hawthorns and of orchards came to them through the darkness, telling them that a wind was awake; the next moment it swayed their little boat and swelled their sail, and carried them onward down the winding river to happier places and the homes of harmless men.”

“Well, that’s the feeling I remember most— reminds me of the whole point of summer camp,” said Diane. “The memory of good things also brought on the smell of 612 insect lotion.”

“I remember not liking air conditioning in our house after returning from camp. I loved the outdoors, the water and the smell of camp,” said Sally Hurand, who camped in the mid-sixties.“ That place was a place to live out being a child outside the academics and expectations of our parents. I could become one with nature, be an Indian, be in a different place and time. I never perceived camp as an escape but as a gift. It was the luxury that my parents could afford for me. When I first started, it was scary for a kid who was away from home for the first time, but I did ask if I could go back. It was an adventure and it was part of being healthy as a kid—to go to camp. The more I experienced the natural world, the more I liked it. The more I liked it, the more it felt like a gift to me. I just remember camp was camp and life was life.”

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Camp’s Positive Influence–

Published on by Kathy Baker

There was no one who came away from Camp Maqua without some experience that affected them in a positive or negative way. From the sights and smells, to the activities chosen, or the staff that modeled behaviors, or the friendships made, the girls chose careers, hobbies,  and even decorated their homes in terms of their respective influences.

“When I look back at my camping times, I can still smell that cabin smell at Camp Maqua and I liked the odor,” said fifties camper Barb Hale,  and she was not alone. The smell of the bare wood in the huts and lodge were so fragrant to Bev Lemanski (1945), that she built a cedar screened porch on to her house to bring back the smell, and the white Coral Bell flower continues to grow in her garden as a reminder of camp.

“I always loved the out-of-doors, even before camp,” said Barb Cruey (1956). “When it was raining, I loved it even more. When I walk around our 325 acres up north, I can still smell the ferns that remind me of Maqua. Camp definitely affected me. I have two children and three grandchildren and I taught them all to swim and both my children went to camp, although I don’t think they enjoyed it as much as I, despite having some of the same experiences.”

Forties to fifties girl Marsha Immerman’s love affair with Camp Maqua and her experiences with horseback riding led her on a life-long passion with riding, art that depicted many parts of her camping experience and she often selected her dwellings based on a “lodgey” look.

“I am who I am today because of my love of the outdoors, horses and water. The fact that every one of my homes after I got married had to have a screened in porch, where I could sleep or listen to the rain is an indication of how much Camp Maqua influenced me. Even when my kids were little and we camped, it could be eleven o’clock at night and if our tent wasn’t going to be pitched by a body of water, I would make my husband drive to find some. I had to be camping beside water.”

Marsha also sent her two girls to camp in Colorado, but only one liked the experience.  (They do remember the songs she used to sing to them from camp from her little MG until they would tell her to shut up:)

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A Safe And Happy Camp

Published on by Kathy Baker

The physical plant of Camp Maqua was listed as ‘rustic” in the 1971 report from the Dept. of Social Services, but “conducive to a quality camp experience”. The report confirmed the positives of the camp stating, “Camp Maqua is definitely a fun place to be for YWCA girls. The program is varied and complete and the leadership is mature and experienced.” With that recommendation, the camp received it license for 1972.

“It appeared all fears and anxieties relative to being away from home had been dispelled,” wrote James Sweeting, who evaluated the camp in 1974 for the Dept. of Social Services. “A wholesome rapport between campers and staff members was obvious throughout the camp.”

Ann Pennington (1963-72) said, “Maqua was never a pretentious camp. The simple things made it special. The camp directors concentrated on the basics of outdoor life and physical activity, and it was a building block for me. That atmosphere of activity helped me make the decision to go into teaching and physical education”,

Dorothe Balaskas was the camp’s director for most of the years Ann was there, and she remembers that all the girls respected her so much that they would have done anything to help her out. Ann went off to college, thinking it would be the last time she would attend Maqua, until she heard there was to be a new director. She drove to Bay City to a meeting at the Y, only to discover that her physical education teacher Sue Patenge was going to be the new director. Ann decided, along with her friend Ann Carney, that they should return to help Sue transition her first year as a director with knowledgeable counselors under her.  Both Anns were indicative of the strong leaders that kept Camp Maqua’s reputation so positive for all those years.

Alice Bishop had been the camp director in 1961 and her report illustrated the type of order that made for such an organized camp. The counselors were in their cabins from 1:00-4:00 to receive the campers and other staff members were assigned to jobs with parking, luggage delivery, waterfront watch, and money collection.  This type of schedule was used for every session and helped with the continuity of the camp.

Cathy Hawkins, who camped in the sixties, said, “It was a happy camp and there was something for everyone. It was a good nature experience for girls, especially to be away from home.”

“It was a happy camp with no bullying. It wasn’t tolerated. Everyone got along because there were strong leaders with a strong, positive influence, “ said Missy Butsch, who also camped in the sixties.

Ilene Zacher (1959+) attended camp in the era when the Jewish camp movement began and attended Tamarack, but thought it was more like a retreat than a camp. She enjoyed the feel and experience she had at Maqua much more.

“As much as I loved my summers at my cottage with my family, I loved the giving and loving environment of Maqua. Everybody had a place there. Everyone got awards. There was one summer when I was twelve that I went to tennis camp in downtown Detroit. Mrs. Hoxie, who was famous in the tennis circles and a friend of my grandmother, took me under her wing. I was with older kids that summer and it was completely different, but I went back to Maqua the next summer. Honestly, I was so busy that summer, I never had time to miss it,” said Chris Lambert, who began in 1958.

“It was one huge family and there was so much inclusiveness. I was a shy kid then, but the thing that struck me then was how much we were all included. Our cabin became our family and we all became close. Later, as a staffer, we wanted to do that for our campers—-provide that feeling of being included.”

Stephanie Patterson (1961-65) went off to Maqua at the age of ten, reluctant, but came away with a great feeling of being welcomed with open arms from a diverse group of people. Others, like Jane Linder (1956+), felt it was run as a true Christian camp and Barb Rehmus (1965-76) loved the warmth and safety she felt over her long camping years at Maqua.