How cool is that?!

Camp Kesem: Children of Cancer Patients get a week of care-free, joyous living
(Deseret News, August 21, 2010)

EMIGRATION CANYON — The kids, more than 12 of them, are trying to tie themselves into a single knot, holding hands and laughing like crazy as they step over legs and duck under arms.  It's an exercise in joy, very unlike some of the knots they've been tied in by life.  This is Camp Kesem, a free weeklong summer camp for children who have or had a parent with cancer. The Hebrew word kesem means magic. And the magic here is that cancer does not get center stage. Childhood does.  It's also a place where the counselors not only volunteer but raise the money to pay for everything, relying heavily on the goodwill of individuals, their own ingenuity to come up with clever ideas to attract money and new skills such as grant writing.

BYU student Brian Hansen leads a camp song at Camp Kesem. 
The camp is for children of people who have or have had cancer.

It's about kids — the campers, who are ages 6 to 13, and the counselors who are college age but definitely kids at heart. Camp Kesem is a decade-old national organization with camps attached to 23 universities, says its national program director, Sigall Rave, who was visiting the camp for a couple of days. Rave and a colleague between them visit every camp every summer.

Spencer Ginther climbs onto Camp Kesem counselor Adam Johnson's

back during an activity for Camp Kesem on Thursday.

In Utah, it's Camp Kesem BYU, with all the counselors from BYU, except two who are now doing post-graduate work at the University of Utah. Founded at Stanford University, Camp Kesem not only reaches out to the kids, whose struggle with a parent's cancer is sometimes not well-understood or even noticed outside the family, but it gives the counselors the leadership skills that classrooms alone can't, Rave said.

"We are making a wonderful new group of leaders," she said.

For campers Jolly Rancher, Wolverine and Snoozers, it's all about having a grand time with great friends. In real life, they are Stephanie Held, 13; Brian Chase Raines, 10; and Kanyon Fox, 10. Here, though, both campers and counselors choose the names they want and bury themselves in delights like Snoozer's beloved "Ride That Pony" game or Wolverine's favorite pastime, swimming. He says he doesn't make friends easily at school, but here, he has so many friends.

Campers participate in an activity called the "human knot" at Camp Kesem on Thursday.

And at night, as they wind down, the campers discuss their days in playful terms that may become serious or not. Ask Jolly Rancher three things that would make life perfect and she answers a house that never gets dirty, living underwater and a day spent in the world of her favorite book or movie. Ask one of the children about heroes, though, and you might hear it's "my mom, but she died of cancer last year."

It's held at Camp Kostopulos, and the kids enjoy all that means, from the knotted ropes course to theater in the "bear den" yurt, arts and crafts, sports and swimming.  There are professional advisers, but mostly it's the kids and college-student counselors, who each underwent 30 hours of intensive training, countless sessions of "how will we raise enough money" and this year, with the economy tight, some hard decisions on how many kids they'd have to turn down.  In the end, says Ryan "Boo-yah" Willis, they took 40 and had to turn another dozen away.

Willis headed the recruiting, and they had reached their cap in two weeks. Pumpkin — actually BYU exercise physiology major Alicia Chidester — not only chaired this year's camp but did most of the grant writing, too. She knows all the kids by both their names, and if she slips and uses the real name, she has to kiss a tree. Monday, she kissed seven trees, but her lips have been bark-burn free for two days now.  Her uncle, counselor "Goose," aka Kyle Hartman, a science major, was a Scout whose mom had skin cancer. The camp's a natural fit for him, he says, and the joy comes in watching shy kids "bloom like a flower" by week's end.  Another counselor, Sully, aka Cameron Curtis, is back for a third year because it really is "kesem" or magic.  It's a camp with traditions, like the fact the male counselors let the boys shave their heads. Or the camaraderie and laughter that run nonstop.

For more on the camp or how to donate, visit www.campkesem.org/byu.