Were they a clique if they knew each other? Or were they just friends who happened to all want to go to camp together?  Ann Ward (1958-61), Barb Ballor, Rosemary Orgren, Renee Dean and Jan Haynes were known as the Linwood girls, along with a handful of others.

“I was fairly quiet until I got with my friends,” said Judy Rowden (1949). “Of course, everyone thought we were all a clique, and I suppose we were, but I’d like to think it was because we were all friends at school. We did go our separate ways and chose different activities, though.”

“Dodie” (Dorothy Niedzielski) and I went to camp in 1946 when we were fourteen years old and Ethel Feldman and Mary Lou Winn came in 1947,” said Pat Kula. “The four of us then went when we were in high school the following summer. It was the first time Dodie and I had been away from home without our family. We were social and fun. Dodie and I had taken swim lessons at Handy H.S. when we attended the YWCA Stay-at-Home camp. We had been friends since grade school! We four girls were the clique,” she admitted.

“I hung out in the cabin with friends (1946-47), but I made new friends,” said Dodie Niedzielski. “We were all older, and in fact we probably should have had jobs, but we hung out with the counselors that were our age.”

“One of the mothers in school gave a group of eight of us girls the name “The Dirty Eight” and we are still in touch to this day,” said Bev Lemanski (1945), who said she contacts them more than her college friends.

“The second year when Kady and I were in Hut 3, which was down the steps, all the girls except two were from our street. We called it “The Handy Drive Hut”, and in retrospect we probably ignored those two girls. I have a photo of us in Hut 3 and it probably wasn’t the best idea, even though our parents insisted. None of those girls were really “into” camp like we were, so I guess we were just weird, but it was good to go away and meet new girls, “said Minette Jacques, who camped in the mid-fifties.

Somewhere in the mid fifties, when Connie Cruey was in the fourth grade, she went off to Maqua with her friends Kerry Brown, Mary Obey, Carolyn Park and a few other classmates. “We all grew up together from kindergarten to twelfth grade,” said Connie. “Mary and I even went to the same college. My sister was two and half years younger and the first year she didn’t want to go, and then wanted to go home after she got there. But, we talked her into staying and she was the camper of the session!”

Katie Harris remembered the friends she attended Camp Maqua with in 1951—Elena Fulton, Susie McBride, Kathy Plum and Roberta Wright. Having her friends with her alleviated any homesickness she would have had being away at camp. She recalled one girl in her cabin from Flint, who did not come with friends and she reached out to her. She described herself as a happy, friendly young girl at aged ten, who willingly took part in all the activities.

Anne Schupak attended Camp Maqua for three or four complete summer sessions in the mid to late sixties. She and Sally Hurand were best friends from a tight- knit Jewish community in Flint, but were very competitive with each other. Her parents gave her freedom, but she loved the freedom that came at camp with her separation from her parents and two brothers at home.

“I liked who I was and although I needed them, once I was separated I was fine,” said Anne. “I was pretty full of myself and felt like my parents didn’t know anything. I was stubborn and selfish as a kid—insecure and overconfident at the same time. I was selective about my friends, but also competitive. I did make friends early at camp, but I was less cocky and the more insecure side of me came out at camp, although I knew so many of the girls already.One of my closest friends was B.J. Henderson, but we lost touch. I looked up to the older girls and I always felt like I was sixteen, even though I was ten,” she laughed.

Did you feel like there were cliques at camp?