Long Island day camp nostalgia: Summer experiences shaped lives and friendships

Dare she do it?

It was the early 1990s, and Jamie O’Shea was headed into seventh grade. As a camper at Ivy League Day Camp in Smithtown, she had a choice of activities to pursue off campus.

Was she brave enough to try water skiing?

"It’s the first time I ever learned to do it," O’Shea says now, more than 30 years later. "I became a risk taker because of it. It brought out this other side of me I never knew I had."

When Long Islanders talk about their memories of growing up going to day camp, they often say those summers influenced the person they’ve become. Camp encouraged them to try new activities, introduced them to new people who have become lifelong friends, opened up new sides of themselves that they carried into their future lives, they say.

Many former campers, including O’Shea, 43, a teacher from Hauppauge, now send their children to the same camps that they attended — O’Shea’s son, Jake, 10, and daughter, Ella, 14, are both campers at Ivy League this summer. O’Shea says she bonds with her daughter while reliving camp overnight trips her daughter is taking to places such as Ohio’s Cedar Point amusement park, where O’Shea also went as a camper.

The nostalgia effect is enormous, former campers say now. The smell of cabins filled with wet bathing suits after swimming lessons, the feel of weaving of lanyards at arts and crafts while talking with friends, the words to songs warbled on the camp bus, the sound of cheers of the winning team at camp-wide color wars.

Brooke and Evan Holt, of Oceanside, both 38, met at Rolling River Day Camp in East Rockaway, and when they married in 2021, they stopped to shoot photos in wedding dress and tuxedo on the swings at Rolling River on their way to their ceremony and reception. To this day, they remain friends with fellow Rolling River alums Dana and Joe Wexler, both 38, of East Rockaway, who also met at the camp.

"To say it was a special place for me is an understatement," says Joe, an attorney. Dana, who works for an insurance carrier, started at Rolling River when she was in first grade; she and Joe now send their daughter, Roslyn, 5, to the camp. "How could she go anywhere else?" Dana says.

BUDDY CHECKS AND DIXIE CUPS

Pat Newberger, 82, of Coram, can still sing lyrics to the songs on the bus to the former Brooklyn Day Camp in Far Rockaway, which she attended from ages 3 to 18. She jauntily breaks into the verse, "My hat it has three corners, three corners has my hat."

She recalls taking swim tests to earn the right to go into the deeper end of the pool, having periodic buddy checks — "They’d blow a whistle, and you had to find your buddy and hold hands" — and learning to dive. There were movies on rainy days.

There were countless Jax games between friends. "I’m very good because of day camp," she says. There was ice cream at the end of each day — in the early 1950s, the Dixie Cups had pictures of movie stars including Clark Gable and Greta Garbo on the inside of the lids.

Because of the influence day camp had on Newberger, she sent her two children to Brookhaven Day Camp in Yaphank for years, she says. And this summer she is helping financially to send her two grandchildren to Brookhaven as well.

Rob Krugman, 54, of Dix Hills, an executive at a software company, is also a former Brookhaven camper. He started at about 7 years old, then became a counselor. "I practically grew up at day camp. Over time, it just became something you got excited about year after year," he says.

Says Rolling River alum Brooke Holt: "It is amazing how this nucleus, this little patch of land, becomes another world."

‘ELECTRICITY IN THE AIR’

Of course, some things have changed at Long Island Day Camps over the years since the first camp — Pierce Country Day Camp in Roslyn — opened in 1918.

"In the old days ... we did the Pledge of Allegiance. There was a flagpole with an American flag. We had like a morning assembly and then everybody went to their group," says Robert Kulchin, 69, of Mineola, who was a camper at Shibley Day Camp in Roslyn in the 1960s and then worked at the camp until this year. "Pools were not heated then. That morning swim back then was really cold." Kulchin’s father, Harvey, also worked at the camp; he’s now 91.

And, of course, the costs have escalated. When cousins Neil and Michael Pollack started Brookhaven Day Camp in 1968, $200 paid for eight weeks; today it’s $5,000 to $7,000 per camper depending on what program a child enrolls in, says Neil, 79. Today there are zip lines and gaga pits and pickleball courts, things that didn’t exist in the past.

Other camp events — such as Color War — have stood the test of time and rank among former campers’ favorite memories. "Color War is the biggest event at any camp. It usually happens toward the end of the summer," says Brooke Holt. The entire camp is split into two opposing teams, each with a different camp color. Kickoffs can be elaborate — Holt remembers one year when someone dressed as the Doc Brown character from "Back to the Future" and arrived at camp in a DeLorean to announce the beginning.

Competitions happen over days with teams accumulating points from athletic events and spirit challenges such as rewriting the words to popular songs to reflect camp life. Joe Wexler remembers a Rolling River rope burn challenge — a rope hung between two elevated buckets in the shape of a U, and team members had to build a fire high enough to be the first to burn through the bottom of their rope. And he recalls a bucket brigade — campers in a line passed cups of water to race to fill a bucket until the water was high enough for a basketball to brim over the top.

"There was just a certain electricity in the air when you were in color war," Wexler says.

Then he, like other former campers, waxed poetic. "Something I reflect on now more than ever was how slow the time was passing," he says. "When you’re young, it feels like the summer will last forever."