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Rome Camp Opens Wellness Building

July 28, 2009 - ROME -- Nicholas Alexander, an 8-year-old from Belgrade, is in a wheelchair because he has cerebral palsy.

But on a Wednesday morning this week, Alexander joined a group of other children as they zipped around on a treasure hunt across Pine Tree Camp.

Alexander had already been out on nearby North Pond, where he caught a clam and fish, and his day would be filled with other activities with children who have disabilities.

"I like playing with the kids," said Alexander, wearing orange swimming goggles and cutout, orange diving flippers. And, after fishing, "we got to get ice cream" on the other side of the lake, in Smithfield.

For Alexander and the 60 other campers attending this past week's six-day camping session, the 280-acre Pine Tree Camp now offers them another reason to feel welcome and at home.

In time for the summer sessions, a new $500,000 Wellness Center building has been opened in the heart of the camp, just off the main road. The new center replaces the functions of two older, cabin-like buildings that date back to the 1950s, and it can be better maintained and cleaned.

The 3,000-square-foot center serves as a critical safe haven for the campers, now offering a climate-controlled reprieve from the summer heat and a place to take medications or recover from an illness in four sick bays, said Erin Rice, marketing and communications director for the Pine Tree Society, the organization that runs the camp.

Dawn Willard-Robinson, director of the camp's program development, said the new Wellness Center is especially important for children who have disabilities. For instance, many of the Pine Tree campers have difficulty with the regulation of their body temperature, she said, or need to come inside to use ventilators to inhale oxygen.

The center contains an attached apartment for a full-time nurse.

"It meets all of our needs," Willard-Robinson said. "What happens in this main area is really the hub of camp."

The new Wellness Center is one of other projects that were identified in the past several years as part of a master plan. Up next, Rice said, is rebuilding a new dining hall to replace the current building, built in 1945.

"We started taking a look at the camp facilities three years ago," Rice said.

The camp serves up to 90 children during each summer session, plus others in a day camp. Many campers are in wheelchairs.

But on Wednesday morning, campers could be seen participating in several outdoors activities and sports, including swimming on the shores of the North Pond -- their wheelchairs left on the docks.

"They check their disability at the door," Willard-Robinson said.

BY SCOTT MONROE
Staff Writer
Kennebec Journal
7/25/09


Lakes: North Pond
Regions: Belgrade


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