What’s Up? with Merlene

About 130 campers with epilepsy and Down ­syndrome are enjoying a week of feeling relatively normal in Scottsville, and campers with muscular dystrophy will have the same opportunity next week.
Some of the money raised during last year’s Children’s Charity Celebrity Golf Classic will see to that.
On Monday, the ­Children’s Charity Fund of the Bluegrass, the host of the annual golf classic fund-raiser, handed checks totaling $320,000 to 23 charities that focus on children.
Catherine Nash, vice president of development for The Center for Courageous Kids, a camp in Western Kentucky for chronically or seriously ill children, accepted a check for $5,000, which will partially pay expenses for a week at summer camp for five children.
This was the first year that the center has received a grant from Children’s Charity, mainly because the camp has been operational only since ­February 2008.
Founded by Elizabeth Turner Campbell, an heir of Cal Turner Sr., who founded the Dollar General Corporation, the camp in Scottsville is one of only six in the United States that are completely free to the patients and their families or caregivers. Campbell, who was born in Scottsville, had a son who died of cancer at age 17.
Nash said Campbell had helped to found a similar camp in Florida with actor Paul Newman and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and wanted children in Kentucky and Tennessee to have access to the same service.
“We started out thinking we would serve Kentucky and Tennessee,” Nash said. “But we were very, very wrong.”
Since opening, the center, which sits on 168 acres about 24 miles southeast of ­Bowling Green, has served more than 2,800 campers with 54 diseases and coming from 19 states.
This year, the center will host about 4,000 campers ages 7 to 15 during the summer and for weekend retreats with their families throughout the year.
Campers with asthma, cancer, blood-related disorders, cystic fibrosis, ­diabetes, epilepsy, heart/cardiovascular disease, hemophilia, HIV/AIDS, kidney disease, rheumatic disease, sickle cell anemia, spina bifida and transplants are eligible to attend this camp.
“We also host their physicians and nurses, too, who come here with their patients,” Nash said. “It changes the relationship when they fish together or sing at campfires together.”
When the patients and their families visit, there is no cost for them at all. Plus, “we never bill their insurance and we never bill Medicaid,” Nash said. “As soon as they cross our gate, they pay nothing.”
The cost averages about $2,000, which could include the treatment and care the campers might need — whether it’s over-the-counter painkillers or chemotherapy.
“The grant from the Children’s Charity Fund of the Bluegrass is allowing us to let Kentucky children from the Bluegrass area know what normal is like,” Nash said.
That is what drives the volunteers who work with the Children’s Charity. Organizers said Monday that they want people to know that the two-day golf tournament, hosted by former major league baseball player and Gold Glove winner Doug Flynn, is a means to that end. Although fun, it serves a purpose.
Other charities that received grants of varying amounts were Baby Health Services; Big Brothers/Big Sisters of the Bluegrass; Blue Grass Council Boy Scouts; Camp KYSOC; Cardinal Hill; The Nest at the Center for Women, Children and Families; Child Development Centers of the Bluegrass; Children’s Advocacy Center; Explorium of Lexington; Central Kentucky FCA; God’s Pantry Food Bank; Growing Together Preschool; Jarrett’s Joy Cart; KORE Academy; Larry Gilbert Foundation; Lexington Children’s ­Theatre; Lexington Hearing and Speech Center; The Makenna Foundation; Manchester Center; Ronald McDonald House; Visually Impaired Preschool Services; and Lexington Young Life.
This year, the tournament will again include play on two courses as the centerpiece of its weeklong festival. The 29th annual golf classic will be held June 26-27 at ­Greenbrier Golf and Country Club and ­Andover Golf and Country Club.
Those of us who don’t golf, and shouldn’t get in the way of others who do, can buy a $100 golf ball that, along with 250 other numbered balls, will be dropped from a helicopter on June 27 at 10:30 a.m. at Greenbrier. As part of the Landrum & Shouse Copter Drop, if the ball rolls into a hole, you’ll win $10,000. Otherwise, the closest ball will earn its owner $7,500.
Knowing where the money will go next year, it sounds worth it.