The above motto applies to a camp for children with chronic illnesses, where they can have fun and be “treated normal.” Stars such as Julia Roberts, Annette Bening, Matt Damon, Gary Sinise, Danny DeVito, Bruce Willis, Tom Hanks, Kevin Kline, Warren Beatty, Mena Suvari, Goldie Hawn and Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward came out in force at a recent fundraiser for the camp.
By Michelle Logsdon/Special to The Malibu Times
An 11-year-old girl with cancer once said, “If a kid is normal, they want to be treated special. If a kid has a disease, they want to be treated normal.”
And what’s more normal than going to summer camp?
Soon, thousands of California children with chronic illnesses will know what it feels like to throw aside fear, worry and pain and just be “a kid at camp.”
The Painted Turtle is the sixth camp in the country co-founded by actor/businessman Paul Newman. Malibuite Page Hannah-Adler approached Newman in 1997 about starting a camp in California after she volunteered at his Hole in the Wall Gang (HITWG) camp in Connecticut.
“I was so inspired when I volunteered there,” Adler said. That experience, along with the arrival of her own children, encouraged Adler to get her master’s degree in educational psychology and pursue her dream of starting a camp for sick children.
Adler’s dream is currently under construction in Lake Hughes between Palmdale and Valencia.
“It took me three years to find the perfect location,” she said.
The 173-acre property is covered with 23 acres of lakes.
Adler consulted with a 21-member medical advisory board in planning the camp and finding the property. The group considered three pages of criteria for the real estate purchase such as altitude, proximity to a hospital, flat landscape for wheelchair access and, of course, lakes.
According to an assessment conducted by Adler and her staff, approximately 20,000 children in California have chronic illnesses so severe they cannot attend summer camp because of medical needs.
“Those are the kids we want to help,” Adler said.
The Painted Turtle will host about 1,000 children, ages 7 to 16, every summer. The camp will be equipped to serve children with these medical conditions: heart disease, heart transplant, kidney disease, kidney transplant, liver disease, liver transplant, asthma, hemophilia, sickle cell disease and inflammatory bowel disease.
And although The Painted Turtle, like all other HITWG camps, will have a medical clinic available 24 hours a day, the focus of the weeklong stay is fun and not being sick. Campers can choose from a variety of activities including a ropes course, fishing, boating, horseback riding, swimming, and arts and crafts.
That was Newman’s goal when he started the first Hole in the Wall Gang camp (named after the raggedy gang in his movie “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid”) almost 15 years ago.
“When I visited some other camps for children who were ill, I wasn’t able to figure out from the look of things what difference there was between the camp and the hospital,” Newman told intouch magazine in January 2001. “So I tried to create something that would have a sense of romance for kids and a sense of adventure.”
Newman funded the first camp with proceeds from his “Newman’s Own” food company profits. Since the company’s founding in 1982, Newman has given all his after-tax profit from selling his salad dressing, popcorn, salsa, ice cream and lemonade to charity. That’s more than $100 million so far.
Newman still uses those funds as seed money for new camps but each camp’s staff raises operating budgets for HITWG camps. Campers do not pay to attend a Hole in the Wall Gang camp so Adler is busy looking for funding and volunteers.
“I will go anywhere and everywhere to get money,” she said.
Hannah-Adler had some help last week when the stars came out in force on Nov. 4 at the Kodak Theatre to support The Painted Turtle during a fundraising performance of the play “The World of Nick Adams” by A.E. Hotchner. The staged-reading is based on Hemingway short stories set in 1915. Jack Nicholson narrated the show as Hemingway while the cast sat behind music stands and walked around the stage with scripts. The performers included Julia Roberts, Annette Bening, Matt Damon, Gary Sinise, Danny DeVito, Bruce Willis, Tom Hanks, Kevin Kline, Brian Dennehy, Danny Glover, Edward James Olmos, Chris O’Donnell, Warren Beatty, Mena Suvari, Goldie Hawn and, of course, Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward.
Approximately 3,400 people attended the show. Ticket prices ranged from $40 to $500 for general seating and $2,500 for VIPs. At the end of the show, surprise guest Carole King led a group of campers as they performed the song “Hope,” which was written by Hotchner and composed by King.
People interested in supporting The Painted Turtle can sponsor a camper for $1,000 or volunteer as camp staff. Adler said she could sure use donated office space and anyone interested in sewing quilts for the cabin beds or stuffed turtles for the children would be greatly appreciated. But right now she is on a capital fundraising campaign to pay for the camp’s $25 million construction price tag.
The Painted Turtle is the first of Newman’s camps to be open year-round with workshops and special weekends for family members and siblings. The theme of the camp is an organic farm highlighted by surprises like a garden that grows all the ingredients for a delicious pizza. Adler named it The Painted Turtle in memory of her father whose nickname was “turtle.” The camp’s motto is “slowly but slowly.”
For more information on the The Painted Turtle call 310.456.6350 or visit their Web site at www.thepaintedturtle.org. Newman’s other camps are located in Connecticut, New York, Florida, Ireland, Paris and a pilot program in South Africa. For more information on those camps, call 203.562.1203 or visit www.hitwgcamps.org.