3.6 million American children are reported as abused, neglected or abandoned, according to the Royal Family KIDS website. One of these victims dies every six hours due to that abuse. Royal Family Kids Camp (or Royal Family Kids) was started in 1985 in an effort to make a difference in the lives of neglected and abused children. Today, RFK has grown to 160 camps in 35 states and 11 international countries.
One of those camps is located right here in Houghton, NY, at Camp Asbury. Now in its 22nd year, the camp hosts 52 children from Allegany county, mostly foster kids, for one week every summer. Nancy Murphy, current co-director of the camp with Zach Rhone, noted that “foster kids don’t get to go to summer camp – they move around a lot and they usually don’t have a lot of money. This is a chance for them to have a really special experience, and a chance for the counselors to have a huge impact on their lives.”
The camp here in Houghton is Camp #22 of the 160 camps currently running. It was started in 1994 when John Van Wicklin, professor of psychology, asked Houghton Wesleyan Church to consider helping start up a Royal Family Kids camp in Allegany County. The church was eager to help and many church members are still involved with the camp today, such as Mike and Cindy Lastoria and Doug and Phyllis Gaerte.
Camp #22 functions with the help of over 60 volunteers each summer. 26 of those are volunteer counselors for the 52 campers. RFK requires one counselor for every two campers to ensure that the campers get full attention for the week they are at camp. Along with counselors, there is a dean of men and dean of women, a curriculum team to plan events, as well as others who volunteer to help ensure the kids have a wonderful week.
“More than half of the campers live with single grandparents, who are often not fully capable of taking care of the child,” said Murphy, former counselor, Dean of Women, and now co-Director. “Siblings are sometimes put into different foster care homes, and sometimes the only time they get to see each other is the one week of camp. We try to make it a really special time for them. During the early years of the camp, one little boy mentioned that he’d never had a birthday party. So now we celebrate every camper’s birthday during the week of camp.”
“The whole goal of the camp is to love these children as Jesus loves us,” said Emma Webb ’16. Emma volunteered several summers ago and said that it was one of the best summers of her life. “One of my teachers in high school in charge of the curriculum team asked students if they would consider applying. I did, and we had the best job! Being on the curriculum team meant we planned all the fun events – the skits, game nights, and camp wide events. It also meant that I got to interact with all of the campers, rather than being a counselor to just two.”
In her twenty-two years working with the camp, first as a counselor, then as Dean of Women, and now as co-Director, Murphy has been able to see the impact on the children’s lives. “These are children whose lives are chaos. In the twenty-two years the camp has been running, we have only ever had one child go home for homesickness. That says something about the campers. I could call a mom and ten minutes later her seven-year-old is climbing in my van to go to camps. These are kids who have been shuffled around, abused and neglected, removed from their families. It sounds cliché, but they really do respond to love like a flower responds to the sun.”