Camp was an escape from home on many levels for the girls who attended, but once they reached a certain age, other experiences, situations and relationships took precedence. Margot Homburger (1946-51) continued until she could no longer camp due to her age. For Nancy Keeler (1973-74, it was as simple as her friend Alice Pollock not wanting to return to camp for another year. Ann Meisel (1962-66), felt the neighborhood kids became a more important activity.
“Camp was a very positive experience for me. I loved it and wanted to stay all summer. My father was an alcoholic and it was an escape for me and so wonderful to get away. It was a very happy thing for me, but my family didn’t support it. I cried so much when I left. They thought I was going to be a lesbian because I loved being with all the girls at camp. It was a remark that was thrown out and not talked about any further. I was desperate to go and wanted to go because I made such wonderful friendships. I did date and did have boyfriends later,” said Molly Olson (1946+), proving her parents wrong about the reasons for wanting to return each summer. She did not return when her Birmingham friends became more important to her.
Sharon Wilcox was born in 1936, but in the late forties and early fifties, she was a camper at Maqua in the second sessions. She reached a period in her life when she became more interested in boys, probably around the time she could have been a counselor. Wistful about never having had the chance to reside in Dutton, where the older girls stayed, she was always one of the youngest at camp.
Marsha Immerman graduated from high school in 1954 and did not go back after her last summer (1953) when she was a counselor and horseback riding instructor. She, like many others, had a boyfriend, started to drive and that was it. “I always missed it, but didn’t really miss it until I went to college when I experienced the same feeling in the dorm.”
Sixties camper Anne Schupak never became a counselor at camp, even though her friends continued, citing her private schooling as perhaps a reason. Susan Prieskorn (1966-72) claimed once she got into high school life got in the way, but that she related more to the counselors than the campers.
The social life also got in the way for Michele Butsch (1969-76), although she begged for two more weeks and wonders now why she did not become a counselor. Like Kerry Brown (1952+), who was a teenager when she left, “I think I started thinking about boys and that was the end of it.”
Family situations changed for Stephanie Patterson (1961-65), who did not return at fourteen when her baby sister was born. She ended up babysitting! Geraldine Folkert (1942-47) left after her last year as a junior counselor on the waterfront, to work in her parent’s Mill End Store.
Did either boys or jobs take precedence over camp at some point in your camp experience?