SUN Camp Fund helps disadvantaged kids

In the late 1960s, Las Vegan Charlotte Hill, then working for the Economic Opportunity Board, was thrilled when the federal government allocated $32,000 for her organization to fund summer activities for local disadvantaged children.

Filled with high hopes of using that money to train youth-camp counselors and send poor children to camp, Hill, a longtime member of the American Camping Association, was in for a rude awakening.

The government, in its infinite wisdom, deemed that just one-tenth of that money earmarked for kids' summer fun could be used for youth recreational programs.

That setback, however, led to the 1970 birth of the Sun Summer Camp Fund, which has since sent thousands of underprivileged and disabled Southern Nevada boys and girls, ages 7-15, to camp in Nevada, Arizona and California.

Hill, who has served on a number of organizations, including Friends of Channel 10 and the United Way, said, "There was not much I could do with $3,200, even back then, so we didn't pursue it.

"I had read about the Los Angeles Times Summer Camp Fund and thought that we could do the same thing here."

Hill had two local newspapers she could approach to sponsor what would be a major financial undertaking and great humanitarian task, and she decided to come to the Sun with her plans.

"I chose to approach the Sun because it was more of a community, hometown newspaper -- it had more of a local, in-touch feeling with the people," Hill said.

She met with Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun, and her idea was readily accepted. For long before Greenspun made his indelible mark as a crusading journalist and his fortune as a sharp businessman, he grew up in modest surroundings in New York and had what he called in his later writings "pleasant childhood memories" of going to Eddie Cantor Surprise Lake Camp.

And if it were not for sponsorship by a local newspaper, young Hank would not have been able to go to camp because his family could not afford it.

"Hank certainly was open to the concept because of his wonderful childhood experiences at camp," Hill, who today serves as chairman of the Sun Summer Camp Fund, said.

"But it took us so long to get our nonprofit status that we didn't get started that first year until July. As a result, we were only able to send about two dozen children to camp that summer."

Since then, thousands of local disabled and financially disadvantaged children have enjoyed a camp experience thanks not only to the Sun footing the bill for the administrative costs, but also because of the generous donations by Sun readers.

This year, the Sun Camp Fund is slated to send a record 841 local children to camp at a record cost of $165,848. Last year, 815 local poor and handicapped children went to camp at a cost of $155,170.

Verlia Davis, a longtime board member of the Sun Summer Camp Fund and director of Clark County Social Services, says the selection process for who gets to go to camp via the SUN program is not cut and dried.

"Each year, we review about 1,200 applications," she said. "Sure, we follow poverty guidelines, but we also help send children to camp from families who have two working parents but who otherwise have fallen on hard times.

"An example would be that the family recently had a lot of medical bills or that one of the parents had been out of work for a while and was just getting back on his feet."

It also helps a lot, Davis said, if a family can afford to pay part of the cost to send their child to camp and receive just partial assistance.

"That makes it possible for us to send more children to camp," Davis said. "And our involvement doesn't end with just sending the child to camp. In some cases we also purchase things like sleeping bags and appropriate clothing that they cannot afford."

Davis and Hill say that although the camping experience involves just one week, it leaves a lasting mark on many of the children when they return to their urban lives.

"They forge friendships with children from other areas, many of whom they will see in the coming years at camp, and they get to enjoy nature," Davis said.

She said the children sent to camp by the Sun do not wear any type of promotional T-shirts that mark them as being in need of assistance. They get on the same buses and mingle with those kids whose parents can afford to send them to camp.

One of the misconceptions over the years has been that there is an actual, separate Sun camp. There isn't, and that's the way the founders of the program intended it to be.

"We knew many years ago that to start a camp would take a massive expenditure," Hill said. "I could never justify that in my mind with so many good camps out there. The money we raise is used to send as many children as possible to those camps."

Every dollar donated to the fund goes toward sending kids to camp. The administrative expenses budgeted by the Sun from non-gift sources include salaries for two camp-fund coordinators.

During the first year of the program, it cost the Sun about $45 to send a child to camp. Today, it costs two to seven times that amount.

This year, the Sun plans to send 425 children sponsored by the Boys and Girls Clubs of Las Vegas to camp at the cost of $189 per child. Another 130 children from the Boys and Girls Club of Henderson will go to camp at $183 a pop.

It will cost $350 per child to send 54 hearing-impaired children to a special camp.

More than 200 other children sponsored by the Clark County Department of Parks and Recreation, Boulder Dam Area Boy Scouts, Frontier Girl Scouts, Salvation Army and St. Jude's Ranch for Children will be sent to camp by the Sun at costs ranging from $100 to $300 per child.

But the projected number of 841 Sun-financed camp-goers is not chiseled in stone.

"When we entered this project, Hank said that any child who meets the qualifications of needing assistance to camp will go to camp," Ruthe Deskin said. She is longtime assistant to the publisher at the Sun and has worked on the program every year since its inception.

"No child who has qualified has ever been disappointed by being told there was not enough money to send him or her to camp."

Deskin sees a bright future for the fund because "the interest in the program from hotels, trusts, foundations, businesses and individuals keeps growing. It is a project that people want to help."

Hank Greenspun lived to see the success of the program. He died in 1990, but his wife, current Sun Publisher Barbara Greenspun, helped bring the program to fruition and has carried on the work. She, too, serves as a board member.

The fruits of those labors did not come without sacrifices.

One year, for example, when donations were lean, Barbara Greenspun and the late Art Ham Jr. made sizable donations to cover the shortcomings so that several hundred children could go to camp.

In just the second year of the program, donations also were coming in at a slow pace. On July 8, 1971, Hank Greenspun urged support by writing in his "Where I Stand" column: "We started the Sun Summer Camp Fund because we thought no child should be deprived of the fun and wholesome experience of summer camp.

"That's why the Sun will keep pounding away on its Sun Summer Camp Fund. And if the people of Las Vegas think we are over-emphasizing they should look at the faces of the boys and girls as they board a bus for camp.

"Or visit a camp in the mountains and watch the healthy glow of happiness that radiates the faces of children as they look on and participate in the wonders of nature. ... Adults commune with nature but children get pleasure from it."

Applications for the Sun Summer Camp Fund are available at the Las Vegas Sun, Channel 10, Clark County Social Services and Nevada State Welfare offices.

archive