The oldest photograph shown is a picture Gladys took of several friends from a YWCA summer camp somewhere in New Jersey around 1915. She loved the Y summer camp and reminisced about going there more than 80 years later.

Back then, summer camp was different from our experience of it. The Philadelphia YWCA founded the first girls' summer camp in 1874. It was essentially a large boarding house in the country where girls who worked long hours in the sweatshops could come for a week at a time for no charge. The camp, and indeed the YWCA itself, was tied up in Victorian beliefs that equated health with morality. The idea was that if you gave these young women some respite from the unhealthy slums of Philadelphia, they would be less likely to fall prey to immorality and drunkenness. (Interestingly, the first YMCA camp did not open for another ten years. It was, at least at first, a true camping trip, with all the boys staying in tents.)