Adventures at Wohelo Camp

Book excerpt: This is the true story of the 1928 Wohelo camp experience of fourteen-year-old Emily Sophian (19131994) of Kansas City, Missouri. The story is told in part through letters to her parents, Dr. and Mrs. Abraham Sophian, and to her schoolteachers, Mre Emmanuel and Mre Irene of the Roman Catholic Notre Dame de Sion School in Kansas City. Luther and Charlotte Gulick founded Wohelo in 1907 as the first American summer camp dedicated exclusively to girls. Both founders came from American Protestant missionary families. Clad in middy, bloomers, over-the-knee stockings, and tennis shoes, Emily chronicled with compassion and insight her struggles, triumphs, and observations of camp life on the shores of Sebago Lake in the backwoods of Maine.