“We used to have homesick campers, but like everything else in the world, the words keep getting changed, so now the camper who used to be homesick is lonely”, wrote director Barbara Haggart in her report in the early seventies. She suggested counselors look for these symptoms—poor appetite, wandering off alone, and stomach-aches and headaches […]
Alice Bishop
Camp Inspections
It was vital to the existence of the camp that standards were adhered to with respect to various state and local agencies. It was the responsibility of each incoming director to become familiar with the standards expected from each one. The American Camping Association inspected the camp every five years and rated different areas and […]
Issues of Society
The issues of society crept into camp life in some ugly and sometimes disturbing ways, despite the relative isolation of the property. Vague memories from Randi Wynne-Parry (1969-73) included a guy lurking by the bathroom, which put the camp on a lockdown protocol. ‘I liked how aware the staff was of such things,” she said. […]
Nurses, Doctors and Patients-#2
Lurking in the background during her days at camp in 1945, Carol Requadt recalled the silent fear about water and polio, despite the fact that it was not certain how it was contracted. “Since I was at camp during the days of polio, there was a generalized fear and slight paranoia about catching it. I […]
Pre-camp Staff Training
There were no records of pre-camp directives in the files until the sixties, when reports were left in the files of the Bay City YWCA, so it is unclear whether the same type of schedule was used for previous years. Alice Bishop’s first period in 1961 as camp director began with pre-camp training sessions on […]