By JOSEPH KELLARD
The Sunrise Day Camp will be the second camp of its kind in the nation when it opens on the 300-acre Henry Kaufmann Camp grounds, on the border of Nassau and Suffolk counties in Huntington, in July 2006.
"We're going to carve out a significant portion of land there to open this camp next summer," said Arnie Preminger, executive vice president of the Oceanside JCC.
The Henry Kaufman Camp Grounds - which has three such sites in New York, serving 20 area JCC agencies - runs a system in which there are individual camps on the grounds, each with its own facilities for a particular clientele. These include special-needs children, sports-minded kids and parents looking for mainstream camps for their children. Among the more unique features of the Sunrise Day Camp will be arts-and-crafts programs, an upgraded infirmary and varied air-conditioned facilities. And along with the other camps on site, kids share camp-wide facilities including swimming pools, ball fields, playgrounds, hiking trails, a nature study area and more.
While there are a number of sleep-away camps for children with cancer nationwide, there is just one day camp for such kids, in Arizona. One reason why these camps are so rare is that day camps generally must be in areas of high population density in order to be successful, Preminger said. In this regard, Long Island certainly qualifies.
Also working in the JCC's favor is the number of facilities in the area with pediatric oncology clinics, such as SUNY-Stony Brook, Schneiders Children's Hospital and Winthrop on Long Island. New York City also has various clinics, from Sloan-Ketering in Manhattan to the Children's Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx.
"When you draw a circle around the areas where we can transport kids to a camp within about an hour or so, there's a huge number of hospitals that are dealing with pediatric oncology," Preminger said.
The sleep-away camps for children with cancer also draw from the pool of such children, but Preminger notes that some kids feel uncomfortable going away to camp, regardless of their health. "Then you compound that with the fact that they are sick and that parents don't want them away all that time," he added. "So we found that there was still this tremendous need for these children."
Preminger came up with the idea for the Sunrise Day Camp while attending a spring benefit concert for Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Gang Camps at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall. "When I saw all the things they were doing, I became curious about day-camp settings, because that's what we do," he said. "And the more we searched, the more we found that there were none for kids with cancer."
A week later, Preminger shared his idea with staff from Winthrop University Hospital Cancer Center for Kids. "They thought it was a wonderful idea," he said. "And we found that everywhere we went we discussed this with people, whether at hospitals or with medical personnel, and no one [had] ever thought of this concept but thought it would be a tremendous thing for kids."
Winthrop will serve as adviser to the JCC on the specific stresses that children with serious illnesses encounter, such as how their conditions impact their identities.
Dr. Renee Exelbert, a psychologist at the Winthrop center, said that her facility doesn't have children who are well enough to go away to sleep-away or week-long camps. "So this is a beautiful opportunity for kids to escape their everyday reality and just be kids and have fun," she said. "They don't have to go to sleep-away - they still have the safety of being on Long Island and close to their medical facility."
Exelbert added that she thought the JCC seemed "very thoughtful in their process in terms of designing a program that's really going to meet the needs of these children ... children who have been through treatment already."
Preminger presented his idea to Jeffrey Coopersmith, executive director of Henry Kaufman Camp Grounds, which has had a partnership in camping with the JCC for over 40 years. "We, from a staff perspective, were enthused and brought it to the Board of Directors," Coopersmith said. "After decades, our partnership with the JCC has grown into the possibility of a new venture that will include a different clientele, something unique for children, and something that will directly benefit them. And that's really the essence of what we try and do on the camp grounds."
While the day camp concept still just an embryo, Preminger is nevertheless confident that 10-plus months is enough gestation time to bring the project to fruition by its target date next July. Perhaps the greatest hurdle the JCC faces is its aim to make the camp free for all comers, considering the financial burden parents of cancer-stricken children must bear.
Preminger said the JCC would have to raise anywhere from $600,000 to $1 million for up-front capital costs to build the camp grounds, and about $500,000 annually in operating costs. The JCC expects to attract funds from private foundations, corporations and government.
The JCC's Board of Trustees elected Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg the honorary chair of the project. "He's always been an advocate for kids with disabilities or illness," Preminger said.
When asked where he would look for funding for the new camp, Weisenberg said, "I don't have a known resource at this time, but I will find a resource, as I did for Angela's House [for the autistic] and others. We'll get it done."
The JCC has a fund-raising golf outing slated for Middle Bay Country Club in Oceanside on Sept. 15, with the benefits to be earmarked for the day camp and other JCC needs.
Today, despite the fact that the camp is still a distant reality, Preminger has visions of the broader, long-term possibilities for this project. "There are a 135 JCCs around the country - some of them have access to land," he said. "Who knows? We may actually see this as something that will spread."
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