HERSHEY, Pa. — Just after breakfast, the kids of Camp Lionheart sang songs and then marched down a path in the direction of the lake — no different from what children have been doing at Camp Kirchenwald in Colebrook, Pennsylvania, for more than 50 years.
They walked along laughing about TV shows and gossip. Friendships, some only days old, had already begun to seem like they might stretch into forever. So far at the summer camp — a joint venture of Penn State Health Children’s Heart Group and Ellie’s Heart Foundation ─ they’d climbed, ziplined and biked together. And now came another adventure ― an honest-to-goodness kayak ride.
When they clambered aboard their boats and shoved off, the scene was the same as others taking place at thousands of summer camps around the country.
But look closer. A utility vehicle rumbled past and parked a few yards away. Adults lifted hulking canvas bags from it and placed them nearby on a picnic table. The machine inside one of the bags could supply oxygen if someone were to stop breathing. Another could help analyze exactly what’s going on with someone’s heart should it suffer an attack.
The guy with the big grin and Camp Lionheart T-shirt spilling over khaki shorts was really a veteran flight paramedic. One of the grown-up counselors was a Penn State Health cardiologist, who, like all of the campers, was born with a life-threatening heart defect.
But the biggest giveaway that Camp Lionheart isn’t your typical summer camp are the looks that sometimes materialize in the campers’ eyes. For some, these friendships are miracles. This kayak ride means more than a little summer fun. For some, it’s a first time on a boat. Others live with an omnipresent fear that it could be their last. For all of them, it’s a rite of passage in a week of them — a touch of normalcy for which they’ve struggled all their lives.
For eight years, Camp Lionheart has taken precaution after precaution to give kids with heart defects and their families a weeklong respite. Behind the campfires, sing-alongs and nature hikes, safety is a meticulously designed machine that’s so well-oiled you barely know it’s there.
That’s the point, after all.
Fans and protectors
Saulius Elertas, a cheerful man who is among the camp’s most ardent supporters, wasn’t thrilled the first time he went to Camp Lionheart. The Life Lion flight paramedic was “voluntold” to go one day when his partner called in sick. In those days, the team sent a critical care truck to the camp every day to serve as a safeguard. The job fell to him, and he grumbled about it.