VACC Camp Memories
by Veronica
(VACC Camp Volunteer)
Well, I just turned 26 years old on July 25, and I have been involved with VACC Camp since I was 14 years old. I was a volunteer at MCH at that time, and someone approached me and asked if I was going to volunteer for the camp, and without even knowing about it I said yes.
What I next encountered and experienced has stayed with me for 12 years and has kept me coming back. The experience is a freeing one. I cannot put in words adequately what I have found and felt, because of this camp. It's like a religious retreat in the sense that one, me specifically, abandons all thoughts and feelings of the outside world and becomes emersed in an environment that knows no limits or boundaries and only knows love, acceptance, and perseverance. I have too many stories to share here, but I do wish to leave you all with a sense of what the experience is like, and I hope in some tiny way I have been able to convey that. All I can say is to really know, you must go yourself and see and feel for these children and what the camp brings out in all of us.
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Another VACC Camp memory
by Frank
(VACC Camp Volunteer)
My own early memories of VACC Camp are very special to me, since they occured at a time in my life when I was on my own for only a very short period of time.
After my Dad's passing in early 1987, I decided to become a MCH volunteer later that year to fill the void that living without my parents had created. I first learned about VACC Camp one evening in the Spring of 1988 while volunteering in the hospital's playroom. Kim, one of the Child Life Specialists at that time, mentioned to several of us that the Pulmonary Department was holding a camp for it's patients at a nearby Dade County park, and could we possibly help them out for Carnvial Night?
The following Thursday evening I arrived at A.D. Barnes Park not quite sure what to expect, but on walking into the recreation building I realized that this was going to be a very special experience. It's hard to say what it was that made me feel this way, except that there are certain things in one's life that you just know are going to go well - and this was one!
I can remember Dr. Simpser getting his annual whipped cream pie in the face (again!). I can also recall seeing for the first time the life of a child who is ventilator-dependent - a very humbling experience, and a very happy one, to see the smiles, and even if they weren't always able to smile, the peace and happiness that flowed from each one of them and from eveyone in the room - a experience that I'll always cherish, and found year after year as a volunteer at VACC Camp - a little slice of heaven.
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