Local medical professionals are lending a helping hand to area
children who have suffered the loss of a loved one.

The McKean County Visiting Nurses Association & Hospice is
holding its second annual Helping Hands bereavement camp for
children Aug. 25 to 27 at Camp Penuel in Eldred.

Volunteers, mostly staff from Bradford Regional Medical Center
or the VNA, will conduct a three-day camp again this year for
children ages 8 to 12, who have experienced the death of someone
close to them, organizers said Friday.

Anna Snyder, a medical social worker, and Jaymi Angell, a
registered nurse, both with the McKean County VNA & Hospice,
started the program last year after learning about a similar
program at a facility in Olean, N.Y., Snyder said.

Snyder and Angell are both trained in grief management.

The free program is sponsored by the VNA & Hospice with the
help of the Bradford Hospital Foundation’s Melissa A. Price McKean
County VNA Children’s Bereavement Camp Fund.

Beth Price, BRMC’s education development coordinator and mother
of Melissa Price, said Friday her daughter always enjoyed young
children, helping elementary and special education students with
their studies and helping friends and family with their own young
children. When deciding on something to do as a memorial to Melissa
Price, her parents knew they wanted it to benefit children.

The bereavement camp seemed like a natural choice.

“They come with a couple of changes of clothes and leave with
new skills, friends, memories and a bag of goodies,” director of
nursing Linda Wankel said.

Snyder and Wankel said the volunteers focus on team building,
expressing feelings and anger management. One exercise, for
example, entailed drawing objects they are angry at on a bed sheet
and then throwing eggs at it.

Emily Hilfirty, 9, of Derrick City, attended last year’s camp,
she said Friday. On the sheet, she drew a picture of a trailer, she
said.

Her father died nearly two years ago in a motor-vehicle accident
involving a tractor-trailer, explained her mother, BRMC’s emergency
department nurse manager Ann Kaczmarek.

Kaczmarek went on to say she felt the camp was a positive
experience for Emily and her two brothers, Robert “Robby,” 12, and
Andrew “Andy,” 13, because it let them see there were other
children going through the same things and feeling the same
feelings they were.

“There was a sort of ‘I’ve got your back’ feeling,” Kaczmarek
said of the kinship between the children.

Last year’s Helping Hands was held on the one-year anniversary
of the children’s father’s death, she said. Because of that, it was
a big help in that it dispelled the tension and fear associated
with what could have otherwise been a very somber observance.

Emily said she went fishing and boating, played games and made
crafts. She enjoyed the egg tossing, she said, and had the hardest
time with the memorial service.

“We wrote letters and drew pictures and then threw them into a
fire and the ashes went up into the sky,” Emily recounted. “It (the
camp) is supposed to take your mind off who’s passed away in the
family.”

“Some of the activities are simply fun,” Wankel said. “We want
people to know this is not kids crying for three days.”

In February, organizers held a reunion for the group, complete
with “yearbooks” with memories and photographs from the
weekend-long camp last summer.

Emily has acquired a pen pal from the camp, and also spent time
with children she already knew from the Bradford area.

The only real problem with last year’s camp, organizers agreed,
was that no one wanted to leave – the children or the
volunteers.

Volunteer coordinator Stacy Williams said the camp not only
affected the children, but those adults helping out, too. Williams
said many volunteers expressed to her how moved they were by the
whole experience.

Last year, the camp hosted 12 boys and girls. This year they are
hoping for more. Applications are still be accepted, and will be
right up until the weekend of the camp. Organizers said Friday they
could manage 50 or more children.

For more information, contact the McKean County VNA &
Hospice, or visit www.brmc.com to find out about the Bradford
Hospital Foundation’s Melissa A. Price McKean County VNA Children’s
Bereavement Camp Fund.