A camper jokes around with a camp counselor as they play on. — Photos: STACEY WESCOTT/Chicago Tribune/TNS
Driving around looking for a parking space at Camp One Step can be a bit of a challenge because at every turn, youths can be found participating in camp activities.
To the right of the main road, campers ages 13 to 16 have pitched tents and are prepping dinner to enjoy outside.
Meanwhile campers as young as seven and as old as 19 are dining on hamburgers, fries, salad, cookies and Dilly bars in the dining hall to the left, where lost items are found and returned to their owners after a public, loud and funny camp song is sung by adult volunteers.
That’s just the first day of a free, annual two-week summer adventure at Camp One Step – a place on the shores of Geneva Lake in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, where paediatric cancer patients get to be a kid again, in nature, with other kids on their cancer journeys.
Identical twins Bailey and Lily Dove, 18, both had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, with Bailey diagnosed in March 2015 at age 10, and Lily diagnosed in June 2013 at eight years old. After Lily was diagnosed, there was a 20% chance Bailey would get a similar diagnosis. Each had 2½ years of chemotherapy with six months of overlap. Lily came to summer camp at age nine before Bailey was diagnosed. The first time the two were together at camp, they were 11.
“We were scared of the unknown (with Lily) and with Bailey, we were scared of the known,” said their mum, Erin Dove. “Leukaemia treatment is in a lot of phases and being able to check phases off felt good. Having to do it all over again was scary. Camp is their favourite place in the world, not just physically, but the place where their heart is.”
Bailey was eager to attend the camp. “When I was in treatment ... Lily was attending camp and she would come back and tell me all these fun stories about camp and at that point I was not healthy enough to come at all,” Bailey said. “But that’s one thing that really kept me going in my treatment. It’s just amazing to see the growth that we all have throughout the week. ... We all are so close by the end and we’ve accomplished things that we never could have done without camp providing us the opportunity.”
Year-round experience
For 45 years, Chicago-based Children’s Oncology Services Inc. has been operating Camp One Step, the flagship camp that is one of 10 free, in-person, year-round experiences for kids with cancer, as young as five, and their families. Offerings include virtual programming; a Utah ski trip; a dude ranch trip in Mauston, Wisconsin; a day camp in Chicago; and family and sibling camps in winter, as well as one camp that caters to those with brain tumors.
Run by hundreds of volunteers, including medical professionals, the organisation has served more than 19,000 campers, most from Illinois and Wisconsin, since 1978.
Last month, 227 campers were checked in, according to Devin Ryan, Camp One Step’s director of programme operations. With just 12 full-time staff members, the camps run on volunteer power, donations and corporate grants, Ryan said. A medical director is on site to keep track of all the campers’ specific health needs, and if a child has to take their last oral chemo treatment at camp, medical staff can administer that and then the child can go off and play and celebrate with their camp family afterward.
Jessica Hopper, another director of programme operations, likens the summer camp to the Gene Kelly 1954 musical Brigadoon, where two American tourists stumble upon a Scottish village that appears for one day every 100 years.
“You know how it folds up in the mist and when they discover it again, it’s the same? That’s how I feel coming here because it’s like not a day passes. You just come back and everybody’s still the same,” Hopper said.
Former campers who are age 21 or older often become volunteer counsellors as a way to pay it forward, Ryan said. Serving as fishing buddies or as drivers who pick up prescriptions or camp supplies, volunteers make camp what it is.
Campers at Camp One Step play gaga ball.
Mental-emotional reset
Former campers still remember their first counsellors. For Dylan Erdman, 27, his first counsellor at sibling camp – for siblings of kids with cancer – was Colleen McGrath, the current social media manager. Erdman now uses his time off from his United Parcel Service supervisor job in Madison to serve as a volunteer counsellor. He came to sibling camp in 2008, when his younger sister, Mirissa, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Since then he has participated in numerous camps, including family camp with his mother and sister.
“Sibling camp filled a lot of needs for me. I still have friends that I talk to, lifelong friends. I’ve seen my sister, the way she was before her first camp and the way she is after; it’s a mental-emotional reset for both of us. This place has always felt like a second home,” he said. “As a sibling, I’ve watched my sister go through recovery. She gets to come here and be a kid. At home, these campers aren’t always kids. The flip side of sibling camp is we’re sometimes overlooked, which can be hard, growing up. Obviously, all the attention is gonna be put on the sibling that’s fighting cancer and fighting with the after-effects of that. We have group chats, we reach out to each other as we need to. It’s a tight-knit, large community.”
Campers from Camp One Step swim in Geneva Lake in Williams Bay, Wisconsin.
Second home
Special Events Coordinator Hannah Smith, 23, came to her first camp at age eight in 2008. Born with neuroblastoma, Smith had emergency surgery when she was three days old when doctors found a softball-sized tumor in her left adrenal gland. Further testing found tumors in her liver and bone marrow. Until the age of 10, Smith endured numerous surgeries and hospital visits.
“I grew up so embarrassed of my cancer. I would never talk about it with friends,” Smith said. “I have a surgical scar going across my entire stomach. I would hide it if I was going to the beach, if we were in gym class and had to change. People didn’t understand what it was like to go to the hospital, let alone how to pronounce neuroblastoma. So they would never be able to understand me.
“It wasn’t until 2008, when a new neighbour moved in and she was a survivor of leukaemia. She had gone to Camp One Step the previous year and she was telling me all about it and how it was for kids just like us,” Smith said. “That next year, I decided to join her. I didn’t know what to expect from overnight camp and within 20 minutes of arriving, I got an ice cream cone and a free hat and I was like, ‘This is my second home.’ I’ve been obsessed with it ever since. I’ve done every single programme that I could, and in 2020, I graduated from being a camper and became a counsellor.“
In 2022, Smith became a full-time employee of Camp One Step.
“Camp changed my life. I have met my best friends here. I met other kids who had the same scars as me. Coming to camp really helped me understand what it meant to be a cancer survivor and how cancer doesn’t define you,” Smith said.
“I went from never talking about my cancer to becoming an advocate and wanting kids to know that they’re in a safe place here, wanting them to come to camp, show their scars, their baldness, their prosthetics. This is your home. We’re never going to judge you. You’re going to be safe and you’re going to be able to be related to here.” – Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Darcel Rockett
