Knowing your bunk-mates or having a friend or relative at camp during the session was often the best security blanket needed for first timers who felt the pangs of homesickness.

Marcia Michelson had three older sisters in camp in the early sixties and made good friends while there. Sisters Barb and Sue Utter convinced Jane McKinley in the mid-fifties to attend. Mickie Kessler’s parents could not afford to send all their daughters at the same time, so at age six in 1941, Mickie sat at camp and cried her eyes out.

For Kellie Moore, who loved camp from day one her first year (1970), she thought it would be double the fun if she brought a friend. It turned out to be the worst summer, because her best friend was so homesick that she returned home. Kellie camped another six summers!

Seventies camper Helen McLogan was the youngest of six girls and one boy and left for camp kicking and screaming, despite her sisters having gone to Maqua. “I was homesick. I did not want to go to camp and leave my friends behind. I loved my summers in my neighborhood. I had seen Maqua when I accompanied my best friend’s mother to pick her up on the last day. Dana Foote, who I ended up at camp with,” she said.

Bonnie Kessler idolized her older sister Judy, despite the year difference in ages. Known as “Tagalong Tulu”, she wanted to be wherever her sister was and followed her to camp in 1947 at the age of nine. “I lacked confidence. I continually followed Judy’s footsteps and her presence at camp prevented me from becoming homesick. Whatever Judy wanted to do, I wanted to do. But, I was never in the same group as my sister and that was probably a good thing.”

Having a friend helped Linda Doering adjust when she was a camper at a different site, which in turn allowed her to draw on her experience of fright and homesickness when she took over a cabin of fifth graders in the early sixties at Maqua. Bonnie Schlatter also dealt with a frantically homesick child in the seventies, but acted like the big sister to handle her situation as a first time counselor in 1975.

Julie Hutchins and cousin Rachel were the same age and her parents figured Rachel would keep Julie from crying from homesickness if they were in the same hut. “I liked home. My sisters all loved it. I was a Mama’s girl,” admitted Julie, whose twin sister was apparently the more independent twin when they were eleven in 1960. “Our parents used to drive for hours and hours before we went to a camp that turned out to be only twenty minutes from our house before going to Maqua. They wanted us to think they were really far from home.”

“I was the typical sister. We took each other for granted and we were both homesick, although we would never admit it to each other,” said Cathy Hawkins, whose sister was with her in the early sixties. “We were supposed to eat our meals with our cabin, but Deb would come to my table and eat a butter and sugar sandwich. It was as if she was saying, let’s stick together, we are family. It was my first experience of having that empty feeling and I realized how important family was.”

Did you camp with a relative or a friend? Did it make a difference to your security and happiness at camp?