For decades, Camp One Step has been helping children with their cancer journeys — and changing their lives
Driving around looking for a parking space at Camp One Step can be a bit of a challenge because at every turn, youths can be found participating in camp activities.
The breeze off Geneva Lake eases the exertion of walking up and down the hills and in between wood buildings that call to mind fraternity houses, but are actually gathering places and lodge-style housing for campers. To the right of the main road, campers ages 13 to 16 have pitched tents and are prepping dinner to enjoy outside. Meanwhile campers as young as 7 and as old as 19 are dining on hamburgers, fries, salad, cookies and Dilly bars in the dining hall to the left, where lost items are found and returned to their owners after a public, loud and funny camp song is sung by adult volunteers.
That’s just the first day of a free, annual two-week summer adventure at Camp One Step — a place on the shores of Geneva Lake in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, where pediatric cancer patients get to be a kid again, in nature, with other kids on their cancer journeys.
Identical twins Bailey and Lily Dove, 18, both had acute lymphoblastic leukemia, with Bailey diagnosed in March 2015 at age 10, and Lily diagnosed in June 2013 at 8 years old. After Lily was diagnosed, there was a 20% chance Bailey would get a similar diagnosis. Each had 2½ years of chemotherapy with six months of overlap. Lily came to summer camp at age 9 before Bailey was diagnosed. The first time the two were together at camp, they were 11.
“We were scared of the unknown (with Lily) and with Bailey, we were scared of the known,” said their mom, Erin Dove. “Leukemia treatment is in a lot of phases and being able to check phases off felt good. Having to do it all over again was scary. Camp is their favorite place in the world, not just physically, but the place where their heart is.”
Bailey was eager to attend the camp. “When I was in treatment … Lily was attending camp and she would come back and tell me all these fun stories about camp and at that point I was not healthy enough to come at all,” Bailey said. “But that’s one thing that really kept me going in my treatment. It’s just amazing to see the growth that we all have throughout the week. ... We all are so close by the end and we’ve accomplished things that we never could have done without camp providing us the opportunity.”
Lily agreed. “There’s definitely a stigma around cancer,” she said. “You picture a kid sick in a hospital bed, but Camp One Step brings the light back into kids.”
For 45 years, Chicago-based Children’s Oncology Services Inc. has been operating Camp One Step, the flagship camp that is one of 10 free, in-person, year-round experiences for kids with cancer, as young as 5, and their families. Offerings include virtual programming; a Utah ski trip; a dude ranch trip in Mauston, Wisconsin; a day camp in Chicago; and family and sibling camps in winter, as well as one camp that caters to those with brain tumors.
The two-week summer camp options group kids ages 7 to 10, 11 to 12, and 13 to 16, with the last group having the option to rough it outdoors in a tent, stick to traditional camp fun, focus on water sports and get scuba certified, or take field trips to local sites. For those 17 to 19, it’s about spending time with friends. And once you age out as a camper, you can stay connected to camp as a counselor. Run by hundreds of volunteers, including medical professionals, the organization has served more than 19,000 campers, most from Illinois and Wisconsin, since 1978.
On July 10, 227 campers were checked in, according to Devin Ryan, Camp One Step’s director of program operations. With just 12 full-time staff members, the camps run on volunteer power, donations and corporate grants, Ryan said. A medical director is on site to keep track of all the campers’ specific health needs, and if a child has to take their last oral chemo treatment at camp, medical staff can administer that and then the child can go off and play and celebrate with their camp family afterward. From 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., campers have activities such as flashlight tag; tie-dying T-shirts; horseback riding; water sports like paddle boarding and kayaking; movie nights; day trips; fishing and wellness breaks.
Jessica Hopper, another director of program operations, likens the summer camp to the Gene Kelly 1954 musical “Brigadoon,” where two American tourists stumble upon a Scottish village that appears for one day every 100 years.
“You know how it folds up in the mist and when they discover it again, it’s the same? That’s how I feel coming here because it’s like not a day passes. You just come back and everybody’s still the same,” Hopper said.
And once you become a camper at Camp One Step, you are family — regardless of whether you’re in remission, in treatment or on staff. The friendships and camaraderie keep people coming back for years. Hopper was one of Lexi Chopp’s first counselors when she came to camp at 13 years old in 2004. Hopper officiated Chopp’s 2019 wedding to fellow camper Matt Toomey. The Mequon, Wisconsin, couple who met at summer camp when they were both 19, integrated Camp One Step into their nuptials with camp donations as wedding favors and having guests make donations for camp in lieu of clinking glasses for the newlyweds to kiss.
Chopp, 32, who was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a tumor that attached to her ribs and chest wall muscles, served as a program leader for the 11- to 12-year-olds during 2023′s first week of summer camp and has served as a program coordinator.
“We’re all aware of what we have in common,” Chopp said. “That’s the reason we’re here. But it doesn’t have anything to do with our day-to-day interactions or what goes on at camp. It’s an unfortunate ticket to be here. You drop it in the bucket when you walk in the door, and then you’re free of it. I waited until I was 13 (to go to camp) and every moment that I spend at camp, I wish that I had made that decision sooner. That first summer was a life-changing experience for me. I’m making the most of it now.”
Former campers who are age 21 or older often become volunteer counselors as a way to pay it forward, Ryan said. Serving as fishing buddies or as drivers who pick up prescriptions or camp supplies, volunteers make camp what it is.
Former campers still remember their first counselors. For Dylan Erdman, 27, his first counselor at sibling camp — for siblings of kids with cancer — was Colleen McGrath, the current social media manager. Erdman now uses his time off from his United Parcel Service supervisor job in Madison to serve as a volunteer counselor. He came to sibling camp in 2008, when his younger sister, Mirissa, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Since then he has participated in numerous camps, including family camp with his mother and sister.
“Sibling camp filled a lot of needs for me. I still have friends that I talk to, lifelong friends. I’ve seen my sister, the way she was before her first camp and the way she is after; it’s a mental-emotional reset for both of us. This place has always felt like a second home,” he said. “As a sibling, I’ve watched my sister go through recovery. She gets to come here and be a kid. At home, these campers aren’t always kids. The flip side of sibling camp is we’re sometimes overlooked, which can be hard, growing up. Obviously, all the attention is gonna be put on the sibling that’s fighting cancer and fighting with the after-effects of that. We have group chats, we reach out to each other as we need to. It’s a tight-knit, large community.”
Special Events Coordinator Hannah Smith, 23, came to her first camp at age 8 in 2008. Born with neuroblastoma, Smith had emergency surgery when she was three days old when doctors found a softball-sized tumor in her left adrenal gland. Further testing found tumors in her liver and bone marrow. Until the age of 10, Smith endured numerous surgeries and hospital visits.
“I grew up so embarrassed of my cancer. I would never talk about it with friends,” Smith said. “I have a surgical scar going across my entire stomach. I would hide it if I was going to the beach, if we were in gym class and had to change. People didn’t understand what it was like to go to the hospital, let alone how to pronounce neuroblastoma. So they would never be able to understand me.
“It wasn’t until 2008, when a new neighbor moved in and she was a survivor of leukemia. She had gone to Camp One Step the previous year and she was telling me all about it and how it was for kids just like us,” Smith said. “That next year, I decided to join her. I didn’t know what to expect from overnight camp and within 20 minutes of arriving, I got an ice cream cone and a free hat and I was like, ‘This is my second home.’ I’ve been obsessed with it ever since. I’ve done every single program that I could, and in 2020, I graduated from being a camper and became a counselor.“
In 2022, Smith became a full-time employee of Camp One Step.
“Camp changed my life. I have met my best friends here. I met other kids who had the same scars as me. Coming to camp really helped me understand what it meant to be a cancer survivor and how cancer doesn’t define you,” Smith said. “I went from never talking about my cancer to becoming an advocate and wanting kids to know that they’re in a safe place here, wanting them to come to camp, show their scars, their baldness, their prosthetics. This is your home. We’re never going to judge you. You’re going to be safe and you’re going to be able to be related to here.”
Smith, now in remission, said her father has since endured his own prostate cancer journey and the pair are considering getting matching cancer survivor tattoos — hers a gold ribbon for childhood cancer, his a light blue ribbon for prostate cancer. But before that happens, Smith is training to run her first marathon in Berlin in September. She is one of about a dozen people running to raise funds for Camp One Step, a camp that she said will be a part of her life forever. She even passed on a family trip to Australia when she was 12 because she didn’t want to miss camp.
Smith can’t picture what her life would be like without camp. She’s thankful for being able to find it at such a young age and make special memories. Ryan said Camp One Step tries to serve the whole family, not just the patient, because cancer journeys are a whole family effort.
“A lot of our kids, including myself, now that we’re in survivorship and we’re healthy, will say that we’re thankful for what we’ve gone through because we’ve met the most amazing people and we found the most amazing organization,” Smith said.
Follow Camp One Step, on Facebook @CampOneStep, Instagram @CampOneStep and Twitter @CampOneStep. Donations can be made at https://camponestep.org/donate-2.
