DATE: Thursday, August 28, 1997             TAG: 9708270164

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY STEPHEN KIEHL, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: LACEY SPRINGS, VA.                LENGTH:  164 lines

UNITED BY THEIR BURNSTHE MID-ATLANTIC BURN CAMP IS A PLACE WHERE KIDS CAN TAKE THEIR SHIRTS OFF AND GET IN THE POOL WITHOUT WORRYING ABOUT WHAT PEOPLE WILL SAY, WHERE THEY CAN DISCUSS LIVING WITH A BURN, AND WHERE THEY CAN FIND OTHER KIDS JUST LIKE THEMSELVES.

IT WAS 7:30 p.m. and the ``hoboes'' were still cooking on the open campfire, but nobody seemed to care. The 10 campers and four counselors collectively known as Group 7 were sitting on logs arranged in a circle around the fire and discussing just about everything - except for the one topic most obvious: their burns.

They were at the Mid-Atlantic Burn Camp in Lacey Springs, a town just north of Harrisonburg. But you'd never know it without looking at them.

``Who really killed JFK?'' counselor Gary Clark asked the kids.

``The CIA did it,'' replied James Flippo, a 14-year-old from Bowie, Md., wearing a light blue crushable golf hat and a mischievous grin. ``He was too good for the public. He was doing too much.''

As the few remaining rays of sunlight found their way through the thick forest, the discussion moved on to who could best represent the group at that night's game of Wheel of Fortune, and then on to who had cursed the most that week.

Clark, a 33-year-old police officer from Baltimore, quickly put an end to that line of conversation by asking the group what was the most fun thing they had done all week.

``Rock climbing.''

``Horseback riding, swimming, canoeing.''

``Playing baseball.''

``The party last night.''

``Everything.''

For 79 children ages 8 to 17, that was the right answer. They joined 40 counselors to spend last week at Camp Horizons, which became for seven days a refuge for these children who must go through life dealing with the stares, questions and ostracism that comes with severe burns. While some of them have first-degree burns, others have second-degree and third-degree burns covering up to 90 percent of their body.

So for one week every August for the past nine years, the Mid-Atlantic Burn Camp has been a place where these kids can take their shirts off and get in the pool without worrying about what people will say and think, where they can discuss living with a burn and fears of the future, and where they can find other kids like themselves.

``When they're little, they need to know there's someone else out there like them,'' said Linda French, who founded the camp with Tonas Kalil in 1989. She said the older kids worry about things like dating, college and marriage. The campers are organized by age into eight groups.

Michael Moxley, a 14-year-old from Frederick, Md., attending camp for the fifth time, was burned when he was 2. He was standing on a stool by the stove at his grandfather's house when he started to fall and grabbed onto a pot of boiling spaghetti noodles. The pot overturned and hot water cascaded onto his left arm.

``At camp I can get away from people who keep asking what happened, and you can be your own person,'' he said, taking time out from eating his hobo - chicken, celery, carrots and onions cooked and then wrapped in pita bread.

While there are some burn-specific activities for the campers, much of the week is spent on normal camp activities such as swimming and arts and crafts. For the kids, many of whom don't know any other burn survivors, it's therapy enough just to see that they're not alone.

``A very tiny percentage of people in this country have burn injuries,'' said Kalil, 43. ``You can have a large metro area and kids can go to a public school that has 500 students, and they're the only one who's a burn survivor.

``If there's a kid who has no ears or no fingers or scars, they stand out. So there's that isolation of being different and not having anyone to relate to. And, suddenly, they're in this environment where 80 people have shared some aspect of their experience.''

One of them was Eric Holmes, a 9-year-old from Portsmouth. He was burned on his stomach and thighs when he was 2. A cousin pulled a pot of hot water off the stove and it fell into Eric's lap. He spent a month in a hospital.

This was Eric's first year at burn camp and his first time at any camp, so he was naturally a little nervous before he arrived. But while eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich last Thursday, he said he loved the camp. His favorite activities were swimming and horseback riding.

It was not his first time riding horses - he had done it once before at a party, so he said he knew what to do when his horse unexpectedly started cantering one morning.

``I just held on to the reins,'' said Eric, who will soon enter the fifth grade at Lake View Elementary School.

Like the 78 other kids at camp, Eric attended for free. He was sponsored by the Tidewater Fire Educators Network.

Jeanette Hentze of the Portsmouth Fire Department spent a day at the camp last year. She was asked by the camp directors to help find kids from southeastern Virginia who had burn injuries. It is difficult to find children from urban areas who are burn survivors because many were burned when they were young and have moved since then, Hentze said.

Hentze found Eric when she was teaching a fire prevention class at his school. He was the only child from Hampton Roads to attend the camp this year.

The cost of the camp - $650 per child - is mostly covered by fire departments. However, the camp has also received contributions from the United Way, corporations and individuals.

This year, the Charles Dickens Heritage Foundation donated $6,500. Catherine Dickens, 31, the great-great-great-granddaugher of Charles Dickens, and her husband volunteered as counselors at the camp last week.

``This is the first time I've ever been to any camp. It's very enlightening,'' said Dickens, who lives on the British Virgin Islands. ``If I go back and make a good report to my mother (the foundation's president), I'm sure she'll make further contributions to the burn camp.''

The camp draws children from Virginia through New York, and this year there were also campers from Texas, Florida and England. Some of the campers are from rural areas; others are city-dwellers who had never ridden a horse until attending this camp. Some are from families in the highest income brackets, while others are from single-parent homes on welfare.

They are united by their burns.

``It's nice to be able to feel comfortable about yourself,'' said RoseMarie Williston, a 17-year-old from Baltimore. ``I've never really seen that many people who are burned, so it makes me comfortable to know that other people are out there who are experiencing the same things I do.''

Williston will be too old to come as a camper next year, so she will return as a junior counselor. ``I just like being able to come back and see all the kids so happy,'' she said.

All of the counselors are volunteers. They arrive at camp two days before the children for training. Many of them are firefighters, nurses, physical therapists or students. But some simply heard about the camp and wanted to help.

Included in that group is Char Raddatz, 45, a nuclear physicist from Rockville, Md., who found out about the camp when she was on jury duty. For the past four years, Raddatz and her husband have volunteered at the camp, where she runs the nature program.

``The most important thing is that they all feel like they're capable of discovering,'' she said. ``I just get the sense that a lot of these kids feel in their normal classroom environment that less is expected of them, or that they're kind of left out a little bit. My goal is to give them the tools to make them understand that they are smart, that they are valuable.''

Camp Horizons, an idyllic 240-acre site at the foot of the Massanutten Mountains, has not always been home to the Mid-Atlantic Burn Camp. When French and Kalil, both physical therapists, founded the camp nine years ago, it was on Maryland's Eastern Shore and enrolled 19 children and eight counselors.

After the first three years, French and Kalil decided they wanted to open the camp up to a bigger area. So they moved it to Camp Horizons, gave it its present name and formed a non-profit corporation to help solicit donations.

Camp Horizons can accommodate up to 250 campers, but French hopes the burn camp will never get that big.

``There are only so many kids out there that are burned, and statistics are coming down,'' she said, adding that 90 percent of burns are preventable. That's a number that provides some hope for firefighters. When they visit the camp, ``they see that what they're doing works,'' said French, 36.

``You go in and you pull a child out of a burning building, and you wonder, `Was it worth it?' The answer's yes. These kids go on, they have productive lives, they get married, they have families. . . . We have this society that's so hung up on how you look, how much you weigh - it makes it hard.''

At the end of each day of camp, all the children and counselors form a big circle, holding hands, and say what they liked the most about that day. Last Thursday, hot-air balloons, softball and the high ropes were favorites.

And before they break up to head back to their cabins, the campers sing together: ``We are many, we are one/Brothers and sisters sharing the sun/We all beat to a different drum/We are many, we are one.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Ting-Li Wang/The Virginian-Pilot

Jemel Dixon ...

Volunteer counselor Eric Stone...

Camper Gary McCoy...

Tony Bradshaw, 11, ...

Counselor Sue Pisani...

Firefighters acting as volunteers...

Sterling Gentry... KEYWORDS: BURN CAMP

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