One of the best parts of preserving history is discovering the ways it is still unfolding today. Recently, as part of a project to digitize ICO’s collection of historic photographs, we came across a photo from the Trinese Jones Summer Day Camp. In it were two young campers and childhood best friends: Ellice and Lakeisha. At the time, it was simply a snapshot of two friends spending another summer together. Today, the photo tells a much bigger story.
Ellice remembers summers spent outside playing Double Dutch and patty-cake with friends, while Lakeisha remembers the week-long camping trips and growing up alongside many of the same friends year after year. For both of them, Summer Day Camp became part of their childhood with memories they carried with them long after their time as campers ended.
Decades later, Ellice is still part of Summer Day Camp, but now in a very different role. As ICO’s After-School Program Lead and a leader at Summer Day Camp, she has gone from making those childhood memories herself to helping create them for a new generation of campers.
Lakeisha’s connection has come full circle, too. Her daughters, La’Niya, age 14, and Londyn, age 5, now attend the same camp where their mom spent her childhood summers. This summer, La’Niya was part of the Tigers group, while Londyn was one of the camp’s youngest participants in the Bears group. For Lakeisha, watching her daughters experience camp has meant seeing a piece of her own childhood continue into the next generation.
“It’s amazing seeing my kids experience everything I did growing up, and even more,”
she shared. La’Niya and Londyn are building friendships and making summer memories just as their mom did, while also experiencing how camp has grown through expanded field trips, enrichment activities, and new opportunities to learn and explore.
One old photograph connected ICO’s history to its present: two childhood best friends, one who returned to help lead the camp and another whose daughters are now creating Summer Day Camp memories of their own.
In preserving this small piece of ICO’s history, we discovered that the story captured in that old photograph is still being written today.