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 kind to me since I couldn’t go swimming or do many of the activities. She really saved me with her kindness, since I was so lonesome.”

“I was very homesick”, said Mary Jo Rawlings, who camped in the late fifties. “I was a mess and couldn’t wait to go home. But, I had a very kind and accepting counselor nicknamed ‘Dodo” (Diane Dudley 1957-63), who was helpful and didn’t push me hard. I didn’t feel childish. Of course, in the end I couldn’t wait to go back, but when my parents came up after the first week and I begged them to take me home, they wouldn’t. It was the first time I had been homesick and I spent a lot of time crying.”

The busy-ness of camp kept Linda Greenwald (1948) and Carol Requadt (1945) from their moments of loneliness, but for eight year old Chris Lambert (first timer in 1958) it was more.

“I was homesick for two days until I realized it was a place of inclusiveness and there were so many activities that I forgot how homesick I was. It was scary because it was unfamiliar and I was doing something new and at that time I was not a huge risk taker. It was the little girl insecurities of fitting in.”

Janet Dixon had her moments of homesickness in 1951, but knew she just had to “stick it out”. She had a little of that fighting spirit as she admitted,” I would never think of going back home like some girls. That would be like giving up or admitting defeat. But, those lonely feelings were markedly offset by strong feelings of satisfaction and empowerment in being independent for the first time. All of those feelings had a great impact on my maturity.”

Some tried to call their parents, desperate to leave. Carrie Norris began her camping as an eight year old in 1972 and went for one week. “The first year I was there I tried to call the ‘My Mom is president (Board of Directors for YWCA) card’, she laughed. “I was homesick and wanted to call my Mom, but was not allowed. It was my first time away from home.”

Nancy Weber (1962-67) was eight and a half years younger than her sister Kerry when she attended Maqua. “It was my Mom’s idea, since it had become such a part of Kerry’s soul. My parents were older and they were kind of done by the time I came along. I was terribly homesick just my first year only. So horribly homesick that I felt I was going to die. You were not allowed to call home, but sometime during the first week I was fine and then I couldn’t wait to go back.”

“You could not call home unless it was an emergency, but once in a while if you were really homesick, you could call”, said Cara Prieskorn, (1966-71) who scoffed at the idea that kids have cell phones at their expensive camps now. “That is not what I consider camping.”

Did you ever become so homesick that you either called home or went home? If you stayed, what worked?