Chicago ? Summer camp is a family tradition for 20-year-old Web Eby. He grew up attending Camp Tu-Endie-Wei, a woodsy YWCA escape northwest of Chicago where his parents met and eventually got married.

“It’s definitely the place I go to get away from the outside world,” says the college student who’s now a camp counselor. “I can play dodge ball, run through the sprinklers, hoot and holler. It’s a great place.”

His family’s tradition is, however, in danger of ending. With the camp running at a $65,000 annual deficit, former campers and counselors are scrambling to raise money to save it. If they can’t, YWCA officials say they’ll be forced to close it – yet another example of how difficult it can be for traditional sleepaway camps to survive in a modern world.

Already, financial woes have forced many closures, among them Camp Morehead By-The-Sea on the North Carolina coast and Camp NaCOAra, a former summer haven in Rochester, N.Y., for the children of alcoholics.

Pressures come from several directions. Academic and specialty camps – which focus on everything from travel to weight loss – are drawing campers away from the traditional hike-and-swim places. Some camp owners have sold to developers who offer attractive deals for large tracts of scenic land.

“For many, particularly private camps, the pattern had been to hand it over to the next generation. But the next generation is not always interested in taking on that kind of work,” says Abigail Van Slyck, a Connecticut College professor and author of “Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth.”

Lisa Eby, her husband Jim, right, and their son, Web, pose inside Handy

Others owners have found it easier to survive by converting into resorts for adults and families.

“Agony, agony, hard work – all that is done,” says a gleeful Waldemar Kasriels, who opened a youth camp with his wife Molly on the New York shores of Lake Champlain in the 1960s. This summer, the former Camp Normandie is the Normandie Beach Club, with updated cottages and a new cafe and gourmet chef.

The other day, Kasriels had time to take a morning swim before his guests awakened: “I said to my wife, ‘I wish we had done this 10 years ago.'”

While he expects the resort to be much more profitable, officials at the American Camp Assn. insist that the camp industry is thriving, largely due to growth in the specialty camp category.

“It may be seen as the demise of the resident camp. But others may see it as the growth and diversification of the camp community and its attempt to respond and meet the needs of today’s world,” says Peg Smith, the ACA’s chief executive officer.

To compete, she notes that many traditional sleepaway camps now offer day camps, family camps and shortened sessions, partly because some parents are less interested in having children stay away from home for extended periods.

Other camps are adding creature comforts.

The YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas is, for instance, adding air conditioning to its camp cabins to address parents’ concerns about the heat of the Texas summer.

Officials at many sleepaway camps also are following the industry trend by specializing in such areas as aquatics, performing arts or horseback riding. The ACA notes that, largely thanks to specialty offerings, the number of camps nationally has increased from 8,000 in the 1970s to about 12,000 now.

Meantime, in Elgin, Ill., the Friends of Camp Tu-Endie-Wei are madly searching for camp alumni in hopes of raising the tens of thousands of dollars needed to save it. The local YWCA board has given them a two-year reprieve, as long as they steadily raise money.

“It can’t close!” says Lisa Eby, who is Web’s mom and one of the fundraising organizers. “Camp was an anchor in my life. It was stability. It was someplace that, when I went back to, I knew it would be the same.

“We want that same experience for others.”