August 5, 2011

Day 4 - Camp Tommy

By jmarshall

Whew!  This week has been crazy!!  Thursday we went to Camp Tommy.  It's a smaller camp for older boys, age 12-17.  It's a very structured camp and they have stricter rules.  We all had to file into the dining hall in silence and the boys were very well behaved.  A cool thing about this camp is that all of us got to mingle with the boys at meal time.  All the boys went in first and held up their hands if they had a free seat at their table.  Us OneSight-ers would then go fill in those empty seats.  How cool!  I had a cool experience with my table.  I was talking to one of the counselors, Jackson.  Turns out he's from Richmond, VA as well and we grew up about 20 minutes from each other!  The pretests and exams went fairly quickly since it was a smaller camp.  The boys were very well behaved and a lot seemed genuinely grateful for the Vision Van coming to see them.

Here's a great story from Michael:

At the beginning of lunch everyone remained standing.  The camp director told all the young men how much money OneSight had invested in supplying screenings and eyewear at the camp the past year.  He started with lower $ figures and kept building and building until he got to $250,000.  He also explained how the new van (Eyeleen) cost over $800,000 and that there are people who care about them.  He expressed direction to give back later in life.  I was at a fun lunch table of boys from the Bronx and counselors from Morocco and Spain.  The boy to my left had attended camp Hidden Valley, Hayden Marks and Tommy in the past four years.  He said that he had helped OneSight.  He explained that he had recycled some glasses at one of our resource centers and he was so proud to share that.  What a blessing it was to know he took to heart the message of giving back and doing so directly for OneSight, who he had seen helping him and his friends at camp for years.  He got it!

What an awesome story!  By the time we were packed up and ready to leave, there was a group of boys with a slip and slide on the nearby hill as well as a group playing volleyball.  As our caravan of vehicles was leaving, led by Eyeleen, we all honked our horns and all the boys smiled and waved. :)

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