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Parents and children seek out-of-state camping experiences
for a wide variety of reasons.

JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR
Special to The Jewish News

I

t could be the child's special interest,
or the parents' desire that the child
meet a wider variety of people.
Maybe it is a family tradition or
lifestyle.
Whatever the reason, parents are opting
to send their children out of state — at
times our of the country — to camp. The
relatively stable numbers are not a reflec-
tion of the economy but rather of personal
choices made by individual families for
their children.
"For as many children who come to our
camp [from out-of-state areas], there are
probably as many reasons for them to
come," said Susan Alexander, assistant
director of Olin-Sang-Ruby Union
Institute in Wisconsin, a camp associated

1/22
1999

64 Detroit Jewish News

with Judaism's Reform Movement.
Susie Pappas, Michigan representative
of the Student Camp and Trip Advisors,
Inc., agrees. But for the hundreds of fami-
lies she has helped each year, choosing an
out-of-state camp is not an avoidance of a
camp in the state but rather a preference
for one that happens to be in another
state.
"I don't think any one has ever come to
me and said, `I don't want to send my kid
to a Michigan camp,"' said Pappas. "They
tend to pick a camp first, and then the
location comes with the camp."
For Sherri Ketai of Franklin, the deci-
sion to send son Joshua to Camp Tamakwa
in Canada was a snap. As a child and later
as a counselor, she spent summer after
summer on the island camp owned by a
family friend. Her husband James spent
summers at special-'nterest camps, such as

a ski camp in Montana and a sailing camp
on the East Coast.
"We wanted to give him an experience
that we couldn't provide for him our-
selves," Sherri Ketai said. "Camping is an
exercise in independence. It builds inner
strength and independence, leadership
qualities he will use in the future.
"We wanted to send him to this partic-
ular camp because of my experience there.
I have such wonderful, warm memories
associated with that camp. And I wanted
to give him the chance to have those same
kind of experiences."
When their son came of age to camp
last summer, she signed him up as a junior
Tamakvan. When his two-week trial time
ended, he called to see if he could stay
another six weeks. His parents compro-
mised, allowing him another two weeks of
fun on the island.