A few fights were remembered,  and included one in Dawn Sohigian’s last year at camp in 1974, but it usually involved the campers. Margot Homburger (1946-52) had a memory of a mean counselor, who wanted one of her friends, (who was younger), to be in her cabin. It did not happen. When the girls went on an overnight hike, the counselor refused to tell them what to bring, but Margot said she did not let it spoil her trip.

Cindy Rose described herself as a tiny middle school girl in the late sixties when she attended Camp Maqua in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Born in 1957, she told me she had a lot of adjustment and was teased quite a bit when she went to camp. Her counselors were always kind to her and she recalled a short counselor named Penny with blonde hair that was her favorite.

“It was sad to have the girls picking on me and I saw them do it to others. They hid girl’s bras if they wore them. I wasn’t teased for wearing one because I was the last one in eighth grade to wear one, but when I developed, I developed so fast that I was teased for stuffing my bra and girls in school actually tore my bra off. I was devastated.” (Ironically, although another girl instigated another incident at Camp Maqua, Cindy went in on the teasing for another full-breasted girl and told me she could not wait to apologize.)

“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.”

“I was in a cabin one summer and we were watching a fight,” said fifties camper Pat Purcell. “There were two groups in the cabin, and some of the kids were a little bit younger. There was a pretty mean girl that started it. We were all in our “jammies’ jumping around. It wasn’t like bullying, and we were slightly entertained until she broke one girl’s finger. I look back and think it was probably accidental, but we thought it was funny until that happened. After the fight I recall there were no ill feelings, or making fun of anyone. We had just never seen girls fight before.”

Kathleen Clements (1961-62) recalled that she always seemed to be bunked in with girls from Detroit and they would pick on her because she didn’t have money. “I was the poor kid, and their clothes were always better than mine, but we had fun in our cabin with short sheeting the beds, hiding newts, lizards and snakes. We even had a pregnant Salamander, which we named Sally, in a box in the cabin. When we had cabin inspections, we were always in trouble with those newts and snakes.”

“There was one girl who I locked out of the cabin during rest time. I was not quite as nice back then as I am now, “ said Dana Foote (1974-77). “ I just remember pushing her out and she kept banging on the door. Now I feel bad that I did that, because in general everyone got along.I was Jewish and my friend Helen was not, but I never remember any prejudice.”

Pat Rehmus and Ann Meisel were friends from grade school and ended up in the same cabin a few years in a row in the early sixties. “I knew other kids, but one summer I talked one of my neighbor’s kid into going and she hated it. I felt so bad. I remember she wouldn’t let anyone in the cabin and would make them sing some song before she would let them in. She ended up with a letter home about being uncooperative.”

“There were always different personalities in the cabins, but we were not in ours much. Sometimes there were too many pranks and hurt feelings. There was short sheeting and hiding girl’s deodorant and we would try not to take it too far.”

Were you ever involved in or witness to mean-spiritedness or fighting at camp?