For the week of August 15 - 21, 2001

Express photos by Willy Cook

Rainbow Gold 
renews spirits

Children shed specter of cancer at camp

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By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer

At Camp Rainbow Gold, the kids who sing around the campfire, ride horses and make arts and crafts are sometimes missing their hair or even limbs. One boy is allergic to sunlight and wears a suit that covers him from head to foot. Another boy’s body is bent by a bone disorder. But who’s noticing? Here, illnesses are beside the point.

Children arrived from all over Idaho last Sunday for Camp Rainbow Gold north of Ketchum. The get-together provides a reprieve from life with cancer.

Rainbow Gold is a rare chance for these campers to temporarily set aside the drudgery of medical treatments, the constant specter of death and the difficulties of assimilating with a mainstream society that can fail to understand what it means to be a kid with cancer.

Each August when they gather from all over Idaho in a wooded campground north of Ketchum, the campers are, for a week, just a bunch of kids having fun. And, by all accounts, the experience changes their lives. It also changes the lives of the adults involved.

"The focus is on the bond, the love up here," said camp director Ted Challenger during an open house, talent show and barbecue last Wednesday.

In the real world, Challenger is the burly but friendly owner of the Main Street Bistro in Boise. He became involved with the camp when a reporter asked him six years ago, as a bar owner, what good he contributes to mankind. Embarrassed that he had no reasonable answer, Challenger accepted the reporter’s suggestion that he apply to become a counselor. He’s been coming back ever since.

"It was the most fantastic change in my life," Challenger said. But he wishes he didn’t need to do it at all. "Unfortunately, there are 71 kids here."

Ralph Bieker, 18, left, and Weston Kurtz, 17, were junior counselors. Bieker was also the camp’s self-appointed videographer.

Celebrating the good in life, while acknowledging its underlying sadness, was a theme as constant as the pine scent in the mountain air or the rushing of the nearby Big Wood River.

First-year counselor Kylan Peterson, 23, wore a reminder of it in the love knots and clay memorial beads that hung on a string around his neck. He made the beads with campers to commemorate those who had died since last year.

Deb Wood, whose Mystic Saddle Ranch provided horseback rides, called the camp "the best and the worst thing" that happens each year. Her crew "loves it because the kids love it."

The theme was especially true during a talent show Wednesday afternoon. Put on for visitors and fellow campers, it ran from hilarious to heartrending.

No gong was available for "The Rubbish Choir," an ensemble of 15 or so people dressed in garbage bags who were flown in especially for the event from Europe, where they had played for the Popes, the emcee said. "That’s right, Ed and Edna Pope."

The group made strangely entertaining vocal noises that approximated singing and bopped each other on the head with soft, squeaking plastic mallets for nearly 15 minutes.

Then there was young Jo Jarvis’ emotionally devastating performance. Standing before the audience of perhaps 80, she sang an a cappella song she had written about how it feels to struggle with cancer and then survive it. The song brought tears from some in the audience and a standing ovation.

Performances during a talent show Wednesday ran from hilarious to heartrending.

Otherwise quiet and introspective, Derek "Bear" Parry, 14, gave an explosive and skilled drum recital that shook the tiny chapel where the show took place.

Bear began attending the camp eight years ago after he was diagnosed with leukemia. He’s cured now, but keeps coming back because of "the friendships."

"It’s basically a second home," he said.

And so it went, until dinnertime when the chapel doors opened and the young, old, sick, cured and healthy poured onto the camp’s central grassy area. Hailey restaurant proprietors Chris and Rob Cronin were waiting with an elaborate spread of barbecued ribs and steaks.

That’s when Challenger, who has the physique of an NFL fullback, appeared wearing a pink tutu and army boots. His pre-dinner punishment for not donning a helmet for a bike ride earlier in the day was to be doused by a garden hose in the ballerina getup. The group shouted and laughed while Travis Parker, 11, sprayed him down.

Challenger said he would follow camp rules and wear a helmet after that.

The American Cancer Society established Camp Rainbow Gold in 1982. Each year, service organizations, businesses and individuals statewide donate the $44,000 needed for the week-long event. About 60 adults, including nurses and doctors, volunteer to help run the camp.

Many of the volunteers were once campers themselves, or have had cancer, as with assistant director Heather Feely, 24, who was diagnosed at 16. She’s cured now, but remains committed to helping those like her.

"It’s a very strong bond we create," she said.

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