Traditions

Camp As A Family Tradition–

Published on by Kathy Baker

Aside from the wonderful experiences and skills the girls learned at camp, many were so enamored with their adventures, they made sure their kids attended a camp.

“Camp was definitely one of my top life highlights and memories that I have ever done, “ said sixties camper Holly Foss. “It was always the highlight of my year and I cried when I had to leave. There was so much bonding and it was a fun escape from living, just being outdoors and laughing so much. It was an absolute joy.”

“The confidence factor, not from the survival but the skills I learned—like sailing and canoeing and the backpack trips. I would never have done that otherwise. There was a sense of accomplishment. It is hard to know whether I would have felt that if I had not gone to camp. The girls made lifelong friendships. I know if there was a reunion right now that I would be instantly back to those days with the girls I went to camp with.”

“I live in Colorado now and there is not much of an environment for canoeing or kayaking, but when I am in Michigan, I try to fit that in. My daughter is thirteen and I send her to a Y camp in Michigan and I encourage her to do the overnight trips. I cannot wait for her to come home each summer and share those experiences with me. It is similar to Maqua, and had it been still open, she would be there.”

“I loved the arts and crafts and the decoupage boxes we made in the Craft Hut. We would beat them up and then decoupage them,” said Val Van Laan (1965-70). “I liked the whole experience at camp. Learning to swim, boat, singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Rise and Shine” with all the hand motions in the lodge. That’s why I sent my kids to camp and why I loved going to the scouting “Mom and Me” camps with them.”

Anne Shutt (1961-66) had one son and two daughters and admitted she tried to find a camp like Maqua to send her children to. One daughter was the assistant director for a Michigan camp for fifteen years. In addition to those lasting days influencing her life, she also continued her love of the outdoors with a cabin on the north branch of the Au Sable in Grayling. After camp, Anne attended an all-girls boarding school and had a great time. “You recognize who you are at camp. It was such a great time. Camp just let me be me!”

Kathy Krohn’s camping experiences at Maqua in the third through sixth grade (1965-1968)  were so memorable, that she continues to this day reading books about camps, and even sent her son to a camp as natural as Maqua, so he could have similar good memories. “I needed to share what Camp Maqua was to me—a single gender camp where most people did not know who you were, or where you came from or what you had. I did not want him in a fancy camp. I wanted a campy camp, so he went to the same one my father attended as a child.”

The camp influenced Amy Falk’s love of nature in the seventies and the simple existence, which heightened the importance of camp so much so that she sent her kids to real camps to continue the outdoor fun. “I thought it was great to be thrown together with different kids to enjoy the same things and get away from our families.”

Some. Like Pat Rehmus, (1962-65) who had triplet boys, wanted them to go to camp, but they didn’t want to go. Finally, two of them attended a camp in Lake Tahoe and the third homebody stayed home, but she found the cost of camps out west were outrageous.

“In those days camp was different. It helped mold me for sure. Just getting away from home and not being homesick was formative. It gave me self-confidence, where I could make decisions in a larger community. We had to listen to our counselors, but we had a lot of freedom, even to choose our activities.”

Carla Schweinsberg decided to send both her girls to camp, since she had such a great time in the fifties. “Where else can you all get up as a group, eat as a group, and have fun as a group besides camp? It is a place where we all learned to get along with each other and I thought it was the greatest thing in the whole world.”

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Ashes On The Lake

Published on by Kathy Baker

INTERVIEWS WITH GEORGE BROWN AND SHIRLEY WONTORCIK–Husband and best friend of deceased SANDY LANGELL BROWN

Sandy Langell spent three or four summers in the late forties at Camp Maqua and told her husband, daughter Trina and best friends Shirley and John Wontorcik that they were the best years of her life.

“One of the last things she asked me to do,” said her husband,” was to spread her ashes on Loon Lake. She loved the water, lakes and the country. I was able to determine what lake the camp was on from some notes she had made one year.”

“My wife’s personality was that of a bright and shiny person—always smiling. She was part fish and loved the water. She was so torn up to leave Midland when her father was transferred to Boulder, Colorado. Even though she graduated from high school in Boulder, she always came back for the Midland reunions.”

Sandy suffered a stroke and the passed away from cancer in December 2009 at the age of seventy-three. Shirley and John were able to track down who to contact at the camp and despite the fact that my husband and I were not up at the lake in early summer of 2010, residents Thom and Lydia Engel took her husband, daughter and two friends out by boat for the ceremony.

“We had a little service on their pontoon boat and spread her ashes and felt we couldn’t have been luckier,” said George. “The people who took us out were absolutely fantastic and they treated us like they had known us forever and even gave us a tour of the camp.”

Shirley and Sandy were close friends in middle school, but their friendship developed even more in high school. Although Shirley did not attend Camp Maqua, Sandy’s friend Dixie Maxwell went with her and has since died, also. Shirley also described her best friend as a fish but said she was very easy to get along with.

“It was the circle of life,” said George. “Those were the happiest days of her life. It was the biggest thrill for her to swim in Loon Lake and spend time with the other girls in the little cabins.”

Maggie LeDoux had a friend who passed away that had attended camp. She bought a book of camp songs from Restoration Hardware and sang them to her while she was ill, along with photos from camp. Cynthia Gregory was also at a funeral for a fellow camper and discovered at the wake that many of her friends had also camped at Maqua, so they all sang the songs. Kerry Weber had one wish from her camper friend who passed away—for her to share Maqua memories. These stories are reminders of how lasting the Maqua experience was for many young girls.

A few years ago, one of our beautiful Maqua residents, Sandy West, passed away from ALS. Those who loved her boated out on Loon Lake and spread her ashes over the water, as one of her favorite songs was played. I’m quite certain these traditions won’t be the last from our friends.

The Fiftieth Celebration

Published on by Kathy Baker

A document in the archives from 1974, was soliciting for donations for the “camp restoration program” for the fiftieth anniversary for Maqua. It listed “Trail Blazer” as $1,000+, “Maqua Sponsor” as $500-$1,000, “Camp Circle” as $300, “Century Camp” as $100, and “Builder” as $99 and under. Checks were to be addressed to YWCA Camp Maqua Fund and could be paid in installments.

The results of the Camp Maqua Improvement Fund Drive listed the amount pledged as $15, 737.32. There were 153 individual pledges totaling $13,237.32 and the Osthelder Foundation pledged $2,500.00. On January 7, 1975, the amount spent on improvements was $7, 525. 81. There was a list of itemized expenses, which included $3,947.97 paid to Bob Feasal for labor and materials. Paint, hardware items and lumber, as well as campaign expenses were listed. It left $6,392.51 in the checking account on that date.

The second session “Loon” edition was July 20. 1974 and it was Maqua’s fiftieth anniversary. (July 15 was the actual date, but camp celebrated on the 14th.) The day cleared after it rained in the morning. The camp worked on cabin projects such as cleaning the boathouse, washing the boats, cleaning the firebowls, and washing the cars. Two of the cabins made signs that instructed the cars to slow down and a sign to direct people where the camp was located. Some painted the trash cans, some created new song sheets and one cabin made a new cross for Chapel Hill. In the evening there was an old fashioned picnic at the waterfront with hot dogs and “S’Mores”. “It was a beautiful day and after taps, the trees whispered their thanks for all we had done,” the article ended.

There was a full page spread in the Bay City Times on April 4, 1974, titled “Celebrates Fifty Years” under a photo of the entrance sign of “Camp Maqua YWCA”. Times staff writer Gay McGee wrote the article detailing the history of the camp after a rally had been held at the YWCA to mark the date with old photos, stories and a few original campers there to celebrate. Photos from every era graced the pages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mixed Reactions–

Published on by Kathy Baker

 

Born in Flint, Sheryl Biesman was eight years old when she camped for the first time in 1973 and it closed before she could ever have a leadership position in 1978. Karen Selby was one counselor she could remember from that “wholesome camp” that closed with little fanfare to the campers who were there the last year, including Sheryl.

As part of the transformation from a girls’ camp to co-ed, Sheryl was thirteen and just becoming interested in boys. “My initial feeling was, they are invading my space,” said Sheryl, who recalled one drama girl moment when one of the boys liked someone else. “But, I don’t have strong memories of interacting with the boys at camp.”

“It was a very sad time for me. After the camp closed, I tried to go to another camp with my friend Diane. I remember I hated it. I only went one summer and it wasn’t Camp Maqua. We had to wear white. I was so distraught. I kept searching for something I had lost and was so disappointed. I am sad it didn’t work out. The experience taught me leadership. Many of my Jewish friends went to Jewish camps in Maine and elsewhere and had good experiences and ended up staying friends with people they met there. I guess I was just so emotionally attached at age thirteen to Maqua—“

“My Mom thinks I started going when I was eight, so that would be 1972, through the end, although she doesn’t remember me going that many years. I remember the last couple years were co-ed, “said Beth Phillips, who was disappointed that the boys were now a part of the camp, but admitted there were some cute counselors, and one in particular that took them on a nature hike in the woods.  “We took a trek through the backwoods that led to a secret area, which was off to the side of Chapel Hill. The counselors always tried to keep the boys and girls apart, and the boys had the cabins down the hill, while we were all up top. There were different activities when the boys came, but before that, we just used to sit at the campfire and holler at the boys across the lake.”

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Culture Of Change—

Published on by Kathy Baker

 

 

 

“I liked boys as a teen, and it wasn’t a dramatic change and it wasn’t better or worse, it was just changed. It had always been run by women and instead of strong, confident women, there were men in charge,” said Julie, who remembered Joe’s smile as he barked orders authoritatively.

Julie Bernard (1970-78) was not the first camper to talk about the change of culture at camp once it became a co-ed camp.  She recalled staff Joe Liberati, John Myers, and Ken Dike while she was there, who had positions as assistants or directors during this transitional time at camp. (When she looked back at those times with an adult eye, she viewed some of the behaviors by some of these young men as (perhaps) inappropriate, but did not go into detail.)

She described those last years at camp like the videos of today—instead of girls gone wild, it was campers gone wild. Couples sneaking off together; girls smoking in the Brownie–painting their nails after telling someone they were showering; and boys trying to “hook up” were a few of her memories of the changes from the uninhibited days of no bras and all girls. There were still dances with the boys, but they were not the boys from across the lake or Camp Iroquois, now they were at camp.

There was a huge uproar when one of the male directors (Ken or Joe) installed pins in the camp fireplace, by drilling holes into the rocks for rock climbing. Julie remembered the carabiners and ropes swinging from the beautiful lodge fireplace as they practiced their climbs and repelling.

“I have phenomenally good memories of Camp Maqua,” said Nancy Neumyer (1975-78), but, the dynamic of the camp changed when the boys came. It made me more self-conscious and I felt like I couldn’t be myself. At that time, I was at a Catholic all girls school and I was extremely shy, and it wasn’t that I felt negative about the boys there, but it was more difficult to be there when the boys were there. I never went back after my last year. I think the director’s name was Mel and there was a senior counselor from Chicago, and he was Hawaiian.”

“Even raising the flag in a mixed camp worried me. I was worried about my hair, blemishes, how I looked and if anyone would see me crying over a song we sang. I was fourteen and fifteen. I do remember that there was less structure that year and rules were more relaxed and we went down to the lake after hours, but there was no more freezing bras and sending them up the flagpole for pranks with boys around.”

Brooke Sauve (1949-51) sent her daughter to camp in the mid-seventies, and still has the letter she wrote begging to come home because she hated it so much. “When I was at camp, it was very organized and we were all kept busy with activities. She said all she did was lay around on her bunk. I guess you didn’t have to do activities if you did not want to. It was different. Everything had changed.”

What culture of change did you observe with the introduction of male staff and campers?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Separated By The Transition

Published on by Kathy Baker

 

Amy Falvey began camping at Maqua in 1970, when she was nine years old, and finished her last year in 1978 when the camp closed. Her big sister Betsy was her impetus for attending, and every year the sessions increased with her increased enjoyment of her experiences.

“The first year it was two weeks, then three weeks, then two weeks, then four weeks and then eight weeks,” she laughed, recalling that is how she remembered the years, by the amount of weeks she attended. Then their mother passed away and she skipped 1976 and 1977, returning in 1978 as a counselor.

“Both camps were struggling financially and Maqua had the better physical facility, so the two boards merged their camps, or that was my understanding. It started out badly from the minute we met at the Bay City YWCA building staging area to bus to camp. I thought this is not good. They kept changing the time we were to leave to bus up to camp and many of us had been to camp and knew the way. There must have been some internal problem, but we could see no reason why we were not on our way. It started off negatively and then when we all got to camp, we could see it hadn’t been taken care of,” said Amy.

“They hired an interesting bunch of guys and the rest were women. It was a goofy bunch. It felt like they were invading our space. It was just a weird dynamic. One director named Meg changed the colors of the staff shirts, so we were all separated in a way by our colors. Before it went co-ed all the staff wore white shirts with green trim. Now the administration wore red, the junior counselors were in navy and the counselors were in light blue. It felt splintered. There was no unity from day one. There were cliques of boys and cliques of girls and none of the girls wanted to hang out with the boys and the sense of family that we once enjoyed was lost. When I drove out of camp that last day, I was so glad to be gone and it was sad. I just thought get me out of here. The Karma was awful.”

“Nothing about it was the same. It had gone co-ed with Camp Iroquois from Sand Lake and the whole dynamic changed,” said Amy. ““I might have burned that shirt from my last year, but I still have the colored photo of all the co-ed campers and pristine copies of the “Loon” newsletters and every photo in my scrapbook.”

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