Campers from military families bond over shared experiences

This summer camp on the shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene has everything you might expect: Boats, arts and crafts, swimming docks, a mess hall.

But here’s something a little more surprising:

After knowing each other for just one day, the oldest campers, teenage boys and girls, hugged each other and cried openly while sharing heartfelt stories.

That’s likely because they have so much in common. They all know how it feels to have loved ones overseas with the military.

This week, Camp Fire USA’s Camp Sweyolakan is hosting Operation Purple camp, a nationwide free sleep-away camp for children who have family members deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Its goal is to support children dealing with the stress of having family members at war. Some 9,000 children will attend the camp this summer at 68 sites in 37 states and two overseas locations. This is the third summer it’s been at Sweyolakan.

The camp is open to children ages 7 to 17 who have, will have, or have had family members deployed. On Tuesday morning, some of the oldest campers gathered to create their offerings for the Wall of Honor, on which the children will post pictures and short essays about their military family members.

“My dad is my hero,” Madelon Dahl, a Spokane 14-year-old, told her group through tears. Her father, a boom operator for the Air National Guard, was deployed to the Middle East last year.

“He leaves next month for a year. He’s one of my best friends,” Lizzy Lee, of Pocatello, Idaho, said of her stepfather, a National Guardsman who is about to depart on his second tour in Iraq. Being at camp is nice, the 17-year-old said, because “I’m not the only one.”

Trevor Haley, of Spokane, said his father is in the Air Force and just left for Bahrain. He joked that as soon as his dad left, things around the house started breaking down, like the lawnmower and the family van.

“I miss him all the time, but I especially miss him when I need him,” said Haley, 15.

Many of the children, including Haley, attended the camp with siblings.

The campers don’t receive counseling, but mental health professionals are available if they need to talk. The camp offers activities similar to any other summer camp, but also tailors events to give the children a sense of what their military family members might be experiencing. For example, today, eight members of the Fairchild Air Force Base’s survival school will visit to teach the children about things like ground-to-air signals, camouflage and evasive movements. The kids will paint their faces and belly-crawl through the woods, said Erica Nolte, the camp’s program director.

They’ll also hear a presentation from a representative of NASA and receive backpacks marked with tags identifying their “platoon,” “commander” and “squad leader,” also known as camp counselors. The word “purple” in the camp name refers to the fact that it encompasses all branches of the military, active and reserves.

The camp started Monday and lasts a week, with 178 children attending. Some have traveled across the country to attend, including one child from North Carolina. The camps are put on by the National Military Family Association with financial support from the Sierra Club and the Sierra Foundation. The program started in 2004.

Craig Wells, of Medical Lake, said his father, Dan, is in the Air Force and will deploy from October to April.

“It kinda stinks because he’s going to miss my sister’s birthday. It also stinks because he’s gonna miss Christmas,” the 11-year-old said. “I’ll kind of miss him because he’ll be gone for a long time.”