In sixth grade, Courtney Nicolai experienced Hiram House Camp for the first time during a school field trip to the Moreland Hills property, and she immediately felt at home. When she interviewed there for her first job at 16, a pet raccoon was calmly hanging out in the office as if it were just another counselor.
That sealed the deal.
“I thought, ‘I want to work at this place!’” says Nicolai, who did just that and climbed the ranks to day camp director and eventually an adult volunteer. “This was my passion project, and if I had a bad day, I would come to camp in the evening and it would calm me down."
Now, she is executive director of the state’s oldest and one of the country’s first camps — a summer legacy that generations pass on to their families. Many board members were former campers and now send their children to programs there. “And what’s interesting is, a couple of them were campers here when I was a counselor,” Nicolai says of the connect-the-dots nature of a camp that has been around for 128 years.
Carrying on the overnight summer camp heritage is a point of pride for a handful of Ohio mainstays that have sustained through the eras, including surviving the pandemic when so many camps closed up shop.
Dave Devey also grew up attending the camp he now owns. Falcon Camp is the state’s oldest independent, privately operated program. “I talked to a dad who just signed up his daughter because two of his friends are camp alumni and he said, ‘They talk about camp every time we get together,’” Devey relates.
“Camp changes lives,” says Ian Roberts, executive director of the Camp Ho Mita Koda Foundation in Newbury Township, the first and oldest camp dedicated to children with Type 1 diabetes. “At camp, we see these truly life-changing moments happen in days. What we are doing matters.”
Visit some of the longest-running summer camps and how they sustain generations of memories.
1896: Hiram House Camp — For the Love of Nature
Nicolai dropped into Lowe’s to pick up some supplies one day, wearing her Hiram House T-shirt. A gentleman in his 80s stopped her and asked, “Is that place still around?” She explained who she was, and he told her about going to camp there when he was in elementary school. He was one of the inner-city kids who took the bus out to what felt like the boonies to breathe in some fresh air.
This kind of conversation happens all the time, she says.
Hiram House Camp initially started as a settlement house in Downtown Cleveland providing education, recreation and other social services to the community. Shortly after its founding, it opened a summer camp on the current site, which was donated by the industrialist and philanthropist Samuel Mather. It abutted the interurban railway from Downtown to Geauga County, so the camp could transport campers from the city to experience nature — the initial purpose of Hiram House, which is consistent with its mission today, though with a much broader reach.
From school programs to teambuilding retreats, and summer overnight and day camps, Hiram House runs year-round.
“We truly are an outdoors camp,” Nicolai says. “It’s a place where kids can come in the summer to connect to nature, learn about the great outdoors, have new experiences and we’ve been doing that since we started.”
A campership program provides a Hiram House opportunity to children from low-income families, those in foster care and vulnerable kiddos who could benefit from outdoor enrichment. “Every summer we have counselors who were campership campers, and they come back because they want to give a child the experience they received,” Nicolai says. “That says a lot about what we do.”
A committed donor community is also responsible for the camp’s longevity and the scholarships it can afford children. Nicolai says, “All of us are really proud of the work we do on a daily basis — and they believe in what we do.”
1907: Camp Wise – Home of Happiness
Campers from 15 different states and countries including Kenya and Israel travel to Camp Wise in Chardon Township, which is known as “the home of happiness,” says Rabbi Dan Utley, director of the third oldest Jewish overnight camp in North America.
“We strive to ensure that each camper finds that home here where they can be their true and best selves,” says Utley, emphasizing inclusivity, respect, belonging and friendships. “We provide a place to learn and build health relationships and to live in a community where we care for one another, and all of those are Jewish values.”
The camp started much like Hiram House, as an outlet for providing outdoor experiences to those living Downtown. Specifically, Camp Wise reached out to inner-city Jewish immigrants, shuttling campers from Public Square to the original campsite in Euclid. Jewish women’s groups that were active in the early days of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland came up with the idea and initiated Camp Wise.
Today, it carries on as a summer tradition as a program of the Mandel Jewish Community Center.
Camp Wise is steered by Jewish values — and still, it’s summer camp all the same with kayaking, rock climbing, archery and extras like learning podcasting, theater programs and sports. Utley says camp alumni often rehash memories of Color Wars, a team competition that spans athletics and artistic activities.
“We have a strong alumni base,” he adds, noting how they help sustain a legacy they can pass along. A network of thousands of former members offers volunteer support, financial contributions and leadership.
“Above and beyond anything else," Utley says, "our alumni say they found a sense of belonging and community here.”
1929: Camp Ho Mita Koda – Welcome, My Friend
“Those were the best six days of my son’s first 10 years of life,” a mother told Ian Roberts, executive director of the Camp Ho Mita Koda Foundation; she related a sense of hopelessness they all felt while managing Type 1 diabetes. Children with the illness must take insulin every day to live, and there is no known cure for the chronic disease.
“This is why we do it,” Roberts says of Camp Ho Mita Koda, which is Sioux for “welcome, my friend.”
“A lot of our campers might be the only type 1 child in their entire school or district, so they can feel left out,” Roberts says. “At camp, they are surrounded by staff with diabetes, they might go canoeing with their doctors who volunteer at camp, and they are building a life-long foundation of support with kiddos who go through the same struggles they do. They meet friends they can rely on as they transition into the ‘real world.’”
Camp Ho Mita Koda opened shortly after insulin was brought to market, and the first physician to put it into clinical practice in 1924 was Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Henry John. He founded the world’s first summer vacation camp for diabetic children by donating his land and summer cabin in Newbury.
“We offer everything a traditional summer camp program does — horseback riding, canoeing, stand-up paddleboarding, hatchet throwing, outdoor education,” Roberts says. “The only difference is, we have medical staff who are floating around to monitor blood sugar and, if it needs to be managed, we do that.”
For every eight-camper group, there are two instructors and two medical staff. The camp serves about 1,000 children every summer. Year-round programs triple that enrollment. “We are a destination camp,” Roberts says of last year’s camp population, which represented 18 states and two countries.
1959: Falcon Camp – Growing Young ‘Highflyers’
The first week of December, Falcon Camp mails every camper from the previous summer a photo card with a cabin bunkmate picture. It’s touches like this that form a community — one Devey has stewarded since he bought the camp in 1984.
“We are small by choice,” he says, relating that sessions include 110 campers at a time. “Being personal is a large part of the experience here. Everyone gets to know each other, and you find ways to get along. You find a common ground.”
It’s not unusual for Devey to field an email or Facebook message from alumni who “out of the blue wants to talk about an experience they had at camp,” he says. Camp alumni parents who bring their children to camp show them the Highflyer board inscribed with winners in each activity area, including the best, most improved and most enthusiastic.
Falcon Camp is an independent, co-ed summer camp that offers programs from one to eight weeks long. It’s currently the only ACA accredited private camp in Ohio. “The thing I’m most proud of is helping young people grow in responsible ways," Devey says, "to encourage learning and wonder — wanting to take that next step.”
For more updates about Cleveland, sign up for our Cleveland Magazine Daily newsletter, delivered to your inbox six times a week.
