For the past 33 years, my five children and I have spent time each summer in Charlevoix, Michigan, 50 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge. For many years, I left my first three kids, all close in age, with their grandparents, who stored bikes, fishing gear, boogie boards, basketballs and more for the handful of weeks they had the kids. The boys spent their days at Lake Michigan, just half a block from the grandparents’ house, or exploring the town on bike and foot. They checked in as needed, mostly at mealtimes.
As there is a nine-year gap between my third and fourth children, the grandparents were much older when my last two kids’ were big enough for summer visits. Their grandma suggested we enroll them at Camp McSauba, a city-run day camp on a ski hill next to Lake Michigan, so I could stay up north and work remotely. Because Grandpa had been a city employee, the fee was just $85 a week in 2015, the first year my son Leif attended.
Close relationships develop among camp counselors and children who return every year. Several Camp McSauba counselors were recent high school graduates when Leif and Lyra first attended and I have enjoyed watching these young adults grow and mature alongside my children. One wrote a college paper in which she described how integrating Lyra, who has Down syndrome, at a “typical” day camp benefits everyone.
Enrollment for camp is weekly, and children are placed in groups by age. The groups have an assigned counselor (or two, depending upon enrollment numbers) and several often requested Lyra’s group, including sisters Caroline and Ali Jarema. This summer was the first neither of the sisters were counselors because Caroline is now a pediatric occupational therapist and Ali a special ed teacher, both at the local school district where they taught summer school this year. They came to camp after work one day specifically to visit with Lyra.
The counselors always fully accepted and integrated Lyra at Camp McSauba. But the first year she attended, that was not true of the director, a woman around my age. No more than 15 minutes after I had dropped off Leif and Lyra on the first day, the director called me. She said Lyra had gotten her socks wet and needed a dry pair and also, “We are not set up for her to be here.”
I returned to camp with a fresh pair of socks and a (polite) piece of my mind. Lyra had spent the previous two years in Akron Public Schools Early Learning Program preschool and was comfortable in group settings. Yet all that director could see was Lyra’s Down syndrome, not a child behaving just like all the other 5-year-old campers. Lyra remained at camp that week, but the director demonstrably never warmed to her, which I found unnerving. I sent Leif alone the following weeks.
On a spring day when Lyra was perhaps 7, I stood in my kitchen in Akron and watched her struggling to carry a heavy laundry basket filled with dolls.
“Where are you taking your babies?” I asked when she reached the back door.
“To Camp McSauba,” she told me before dragging the basket outside. I promptly shared this in a text message with Meredith Walker, the camp director since Lyra’s second year. Her heart melted like mine. Meredith was just 21 when she became camp director in 2019. Since then, she has graduated from college, become a fourth grade teacher, gotten married and, last year, gave birth to her first child.
Camp McSauba welcomes children ages 5 through 13. Three summers ago, Leif openly cried on his final day, as did several of the counselors. This year, the last day of camp was also Lyra’s 14th birthday. At lunchtime, I arrived with the largest sheet cake I’ve ever purchased, enough for 70 campers and several counselors. Everyone sang happy birthday to Lyra and, at the end of the day, a graduation ceremony was held for those, including my girl, who will be too old to return next year.
There’s a poignancy like none other when children do things you always wanted them to do, like graduate high school, leave for college or career, choose a life partner, become parents themselves. As my last child, Lyra’s graduation from summer camp marks the end of an era. From time to time we’ll return to Charlevoix as we have many dear friends there. But next summer, instead of picking which weeks to attend camp, we’ll ask, “Where do we want to go this year?”
This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, August 23, 2026.
