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a couple of occasions, with a decorative 
sticker in its place. A couple were 
envelope-less — just a piece of paper, 
folded and taped shut, with the address 
scribbled on the back. 
This year, our Florida grandson, 
Noam, sent a letter merely to “Mom and 
Dad” with the street address and zip 
code. No names, no city, no state. One of 
my brothers once stuck the envelope flap 
shut with two Band-aids and marked it 
“sealed with safety.”
And a couple of years ago, our 
grandson, Jake, resourcefully sealed 
his mail with a chewed-up glob of teal-
colored bubble gum!
Campers seem to assume their 
handwriting is not recognized, so they 
need to add a clue to their signatures. 
Grandchild Shira regularly signed all 
camp letters, “your favorite child,” and 
one of my brothers signed his first and 
last name to each piece of mail.
Kids don’t seem to care if you think 
they’re having fun or not at camp. Noam 
penned a recent letter with his own 
Allan Sherman, “Hello Mudduh, Hello 
Fadduh!” parody about the perils of 
camp life. Many years ago, one of my 
brothers wrote: “I threw up three times. 
Twice last night and once this morning. 
I threw up watermelon. I had a head ach 
(sic), ear ach (sic), sore trought (sic) and 
I felt sick in the stomach. I can hardly 
talk.” 
One of my own warned, “There have 
been some robberies. Most of it was 
candy.”

MAIL TO CAMP
While camp letters typically go through 
the post office, notes to campers can be 
sent by email, pretty much assuring that 
what we wrote in the evening would 
be read the next afternoon. Before this 
advent, we would start our writing 
campaign days before the start of camp 
so mailed letters would arrive before the 
kids. Each year, we would send notes 
that started with: “Not much to say since 
camp doesn’t start until next week and 
you’re sitting beside me while I write 
this.” Then we’d spend the next month 
finding ways to say “I miss you” without 
implying that they are missing out on 

anything good. Sometimes my letters 
included explicit important world and 
personal messages, like the Summer 
Olympic Games’ gymnastics and 
basketball standings. During the weeks 
prior to my daughter’s bat mitzvah, I 
sent regular notes to her friend asking 
her to remind her to practice her 
haftorah.
A few years ago, our then 9-year-old 
grandson said he didn’t know what I 
wrote to him because I unknowingly 
didn’t realize he couldn’t yet read 
cursive! Another time the same child 
said he didn’t open our letters — 
because he didn’t have time! A true 
testament to the fun of Pennsylvania’s 
Camp Stone!
Package contents, which used to be 
hand-picked and weighed for postage, 
are now quickly shipped through a 
variety of online retailers. We have sent 
everything from Mad Libs and friendship 
bracelet kits to fidget poppers and 
juggling balls … and soup. 
One year our son, Rick, and a 
friend chipped in and had a summer 
subscription to a local newspaper 
brought to camp each day. Last summer, 
we ordered packs of something 
called “pickle-in-a-pouch” so our 

granddaughter could partake in and 
share her favorite snack food, promised 
by the manufacturer to be “dill-icious.” 
And a cousin once shrink-wrapped a 
pizza in a Monopoly box and had it 
delivered to her daughter. 
No matter what they take with them 
or have sent, campers often come home 
with someone else’s stuff — or without 
some their own. And in the case of one 
grandkid’s friend, with nothing at all: 
a completely empty duffel and a story 
about how hard it is to pack at the end 
of the session.
In contrast, this year our grandson 
Jake brought home a large, stuffed 

ABOVE LEFT: Shira Schon, now 20, of 
West Bloomfield and Huntington Woods, 
gets ready for the bus ride to Camp 
Stone in 2014. ABOVE RIGHT: Shira 
Schon, now 20, of West Bloomfield and 
Huntington Woods, hugs her brother, 
Eitan, now 11, at the Camp Stone bus at 
Farber Hebrew Day School in 2015.

CAMP GUIDE

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