Don’t tell Chris Thiry that working with youngsters who have cancer must be a depressing thing to do. For 11 years, Thiry and her husband, Tom, of Hoffman Estates have been volunteering at a two-week summer camp for youngsters with cancer, since shortly after the cancer death of their daughter Julie at the age of 11 in 1983.
“People sometimes ask, `How do you keep going? How can you do this when you know that some of these kids will never have another summer?’ We do it because for those two weeks the kids have a great time,” Thiry said. “They have two weeks when they can forget about being bald or scarred and just be kids. I’ve never felt that it’s too hard or sad. It’s a happy time.”
And so it is, judging by the 240 youngsters at the One Step at a Time summer camp, which started July 8 at George Williams College in Lake Geneva, Wis. The campers, ages 7 through 21, all have cancer or are in remission. Most of them come from northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin or northwest Indiana.
About 150 volunteers, including many from the northwest suburbs, make the camp possible. Many of them take vacation time to volunteer. Often the volunteers are family members, like the Thirys.
Julie Thiry attended two summer camps before her death, and since then her entire family has become involved with One Step at a Time. In addition to her parents, her sister Lori, 21, is a camp counselor, and her brother Michael, 17, has helped at camps.
“We all felt that by us going to the camps and doing this, we enable Julie to continue to touch some children’s lives,” Chris Thiry said. “In spirit, there are so many more kids there than you see.”
At the camp, sailing, swimming, rock climbing, softball, scuba diving, arts and crafts projects, storytelling and other activities are available to the youngsters, depending on their age, physical abilities and interests.
Because of physical limitations caused by their illness and an absence of people with experience in caring for children with cancer, for some of the youngsters this is the first time they have been able to do such things. Volunteers for the most part rely on the experience they have had helping sick family members or friends. Over the years Children’s Oncology Services of Illinois, a not-for-profit organization based at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago that sponsors One Step at a Time, has expanded programs to include a winter camp, a snow ski trip and a dive camp for youngsters who receive scuba diving certification during summer camp.
Diane and Ray Mesh of Elk Grove Village help keep alive the spirit of their son Brad by being volunteers. Brad died in 1977, shortly before his 17th birthday. A year later, Children’s Oncology Services held its first One Step at a Time summer camp.
Mesh said she knows the camp is something her son would have loved to participate in if he had had the chance. She became a volunteer in 1978, and since 1982 has been in charge of organizing the volunteer program.
“When you see the smiles on these kids’ faces, it’s wonderful,” she said. “The camp gives them a chance to be normal kids instead of kids in a hospital with an IV in their arm. have learned so much from them. People say, `Isn’t it depressing?’ I say, `No, not at all.’ The children are so positive and upbeat.
“We have all types of children–from cities, suburbs, farms. They have different levels of illness. We always have some campers who we know will not be back. And, of course, there are a lot of bald heads. But once the kids get to camp, you can’t stop them. I still marvel at what some of them can do.”
The camp is run entirely by volunteers, including doctors and nurses who volunteer their time at the camp and also care for children who need medications during their stay. Many of the younger volunteer counselors are former campers whose disease is in remission. Mesh said volunteers who have had family members with cancer or who themselves have had it are a great asset, because they know what the campers are going through.
Levia and Joe Loftus of McHenry agree. Their 13-year-old daughter, Charlotte, is a veteran One Step at a Time camper who is in remission from bone cancer. She was diagnosed with cancerous bone tissue in a leg four years ago at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Charlotte has had a long series of anti-cancer treatments and operations to remove the cancerous bone and replace it with an artificial knee and a titanium rod for a femur.
While in the hospital, Charlotte met an older girl who had attended One Step at a Time camps and had become a volunteer camp counselor. She told Charlotte about the camps. Charlotte has attended camp three years running, including a winter camp in Utah last February.
“She was scared to go that first year, but she met lots of other kids with similar problems,” Levia Loftus said. “She’s lost friends because of her illness. If she needs to take a nap during the afternoon, that’s the kind of thing other kids don’t understand. At camp, though, all the kids know what everyone else is going through. They understand if you need a nap.”
Charlotte said that understanding is one of the things she and other campers like most about the camps. “If you have scarring from operations or a bald head because of chemo, it’s no big deal. Nobody notices,” she said.
A current camper who is considering becoming a counselor next year is Karen Lesch, 17, of West Dundee, who last month graduated from Dundee-Crown High School. She has attended summer and winter camps for four years, since shortly after being diagnosed with leukemia, which is now in remission.
She said she has formed “strong bonds” with campers and volunteers. She and her family learned about One Step at a Time from a volunteer camp counselor at Children’s Memorial Hospital, where Karen was receiving her cancer treatments.
“You can talk about chemotherapy and about friends who have died with the other campers and counselors,” Karen said. “Those are things you really can’t talk about at school. I was kind of scared at my first camp. Now I have an address book full of names of people I’ve met there. We write each other a lot.”
It costs a family $100 a week to send a child to the summer camp. But no one is turned away for financial reasons. Many individuals, businesses and clubs help fund the camp or pay campers’ tuition. Charlotte Loftus attended camp on a “campership,” a tuition payment funded by the Crystal Lake Dawnbreakers, a Rotary Club in Crystal Lake.
Mesh said such support totals about $190,000 annually for all of the One Step at a Time camps. Still, it’s the volunteers who spend months organizing the camps and then working with the youngsters when the camps are in operation that make it all possible.
“The first camp 18 years ago had about 50 campers and 15 volunteers,” she said. “Since then, we’ve had about 3,400 campers and 1,800 volunteers. It’s a great thing for these kids who have been through so much. And the volunteers come away with great memories, too.”
