From left, Izzy Cooney, Mason and Lucas Conklin, Silas, Calvin and Martin Carnahan and YMCA Camp Onyahsa Director Jon O’Brian, are pictured at Camp Onyahsa, 5411East Lake Road, in the camp’s dining hall, prior to the start of programing activities. Submitted photo

DEWITTVILLE – YMCA Camp Onyahsa has become a family tradition for some campers.

Jon O’Brian, camp director for Camp Onyahsa, said there are many -generational campers and staff at the camp this year.

“Izzy Cooney, granddaughter of Dave Jonethis and niece of Barb Jonethis, who attended YMCA Camp Onyahsa in the 1970s is here. Cooney’s mother, Kate Nesbitt, attended camp in the 1990s. The Jonethis family are natives of Jamestown and were Onyahsa camp musicians,” wrote O’Brian. “Campers, Mason and Lucas Conklin, are attending camp. Their Father, Donn Johnston, attended camp in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their mother, Kate (Johnston) Conklin, attended camp in the 1990s. Donn Johnston, a native of Jamestown, played basketball for the University of North Carolina and professional basketball in Europe after his time at Onyahsa. This week we also have Silas, Calvin and Martin Carnahan, their grandfather Doug Carnahan, was staff at camp during the late 1960s and early 1970s and later became a program director and later the dean of students for the University of North Carolina/ The trio’s father, Brian Carnahan, also attended Onyahsa in the late 1980s.”

However, it is not just the returning campers who make up the generational lineage at Onaysa – it’s the staff too.

“My brother and sister and I attended camp,” said O’Brian. “Our father was a camper and counselor at the Fredonia-Dunkirk YMCA Camp in the Woods, at Bear Lake, which closed in 1972.”

According to acacamp.org, Onyahsa has accommodated youth from across the United States, and all over the world.

The diverse and inclusive group is something which O’Brian and his camp plans on expanding upon in the future. As previously reported by The Post-Journal, Camp Onyahsa has partnered with Prevention Works of Jamestown to host a camp called Kids and Sibs. Kids and Sibs is a camp designed for children who are special needs and finds ways to present a fully immersive, authentic, day camp in the woods, full of traditional camping activities for them.

“It’s really about finding what challenges these kids have then working around them to make sure they have the same opportunities as would any camper during regular camping season,” said O’Brian. “We had one camper who is in a wheelchair, and he wanted to go boating, so we built a makeshift dock to wheel him out to a rowboat, got him in and he had a blast boating around our bay with our staff.”