One of the campers from the sixties loved getting away from her parents and was never homesick. “In fact, going to camp helped me feel like part of the group,” she said. (She had been friends with a girl named Kyle Higgs and their parents were also friends and they were at camp together). “When I told my Mom that there were kids who were homesick and hated the food, she told me that children who were happy at home were never homesick and liked the food. And I believed her!”
Girls who had been away from home, either for sleepovers or extended stays at relative’s homes, usually fared better in the homesickness department. Susan Bradford always felt comfortable at other friend’s homes, maybe due in part to the rigid rules her father imposed at home. She admitted to the usual normal adolescent angst separating from her parents in 1965, but was comfortable being away from home.
Anne Shutt had gone away at the age of six to help her aunt in Massachusetts with her baby, so she was used to being away from home. “I was also an extrovert who easily made friends and loved making new ones,” said sixties camper Anne, who had all brothers.
And then there were the campers who cried because they had to go, then cried because they had to leave—often asking to stay longer or returning the following summers with lengthier stays. Gail Schultheiss was nine in 1966 and very homesick, but the next two summers were double the sessions. Sue Michelson (1963-73) begged her father from the big phone booth in the lodge, but money was tight and she was told no, although she attended every summer from grade school until age twenty-one!
One of four sisters, Pat O’Tool left for camp at the age of eight in 1944. She attended until she was sixteen or seventeen as a junior counselor. “My father came home in late July, as we had just moved from Detroit to Bay City, and announced we were being sent to camp. We howled and cried and carried on and then we howled and cried when we left. But, we were in Heaven at Camp Maqua and cried when we had to leave. If we could get him to sponsor an extra month, we tried. I was the oldest of six with a lot of responsibilities at home, so for me and my sister to go off, it was like glory land.”
“I was afraid to swim,” said Bev Lemanski (1945), “but my parents told me if I did not learn to swim, I couldn’t go to camp. So, took lessons from the “Y”, so I could go.
How many of you begged for extra sessions after attending?