Camp Rising Sun: Annual camp allows cancer patients to just be kids

MILLPORT, Ala. — For more than 35 years, Camp Rising Sun has offered children with cancer, as well as some of their friends, the chance to forget the diagnoses and have the classic summer camp experience. This year is no different.

Founded in 1987 by the Junior Auxiliary of Columbus, the camp — which kicked off Monday and will continue through the end of the week — is open to campers aged 6-16, though the age range is somewhat flexible. The camp is completely free for campers, and Rising Sun will even help families pay for the cost of travel to reach the camp, if they need it.

Rising Sun, which is now a private entity with its own board, is funded entirely by donations and staffed entirely by volunteers, board member Jason Kirkland told the Daily Journal. When he’s not helping market and recruit for Camp Rising Sun, Kirkland works in television. He was a production accountant for the TV show “Young Sheldon” and, more recently, “The Pitt.”

Columbus and Lowndes County have kept the camp funded through the years almost single-handedly, Kirkland said.

Kirkland has been going to Camp Rising Sun the second week of June each summer since he started as a camper in 1988. He attended with his twin brother, who’d been diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma.

“When we came to Camp Rising Sun, I wasn’t the sibling, he wasn’t the patient,” Kirkland said. “We were just campers. And that’s how we like to do things, even today with camp.”

Before they get to Rising Sun, campers are cleared by a physician as safe to attend. The camp has a higher than average ratio of staff to campers — this year, there are about 50 campers and 80 volunteers, Kirkland said. Rising Sun also has a “Med Shed” where campers go to take their medications, but beyond that, it looks and feels like a classic summer camp.

“The overall goal is for us to just try to help them have the most traditional camp experience,” Kirkland said. “Even the ones that may have physical limitations, the years that we’ve done rock walls and ziplines, you know, we don’t let that hold them back. … Like, we’re going to put that harness on you. We’re going to help you get up that wall and send you down that zipline, and just treat you like any other normal camper.”

There are arts and crafts, swimming, fishing, canoeing, archery, Camp Olympics, campfires, and even a dance.

Campers come from all over the U.S. — or even internationally — but most are from Northeast Mississippi.

Counselors in Training, or CITs, Ellen and Nick Taylor of Olive Branch have been coming to Rising Sun since they were first campers in 2012.

“You come in and it’s immediately open arms, welcoming,” Ellen said, recalling her first summer at Rising Sun. “Everybody makes you immediately feel like family, whether you’ve been here for 20 years or it’s your first year.”

“When you come back, it feels like you never left,” Nick added. You pick right back up with the friends you made last time. And people do tend to come back, year after year.

About 50% of the overnight counselors this year are former campers, Kirkland said.

More than anything, it’s the relationships formed there that make Camp Rising Sun special.

“I have met the best friends I’ve ever had at this camp,” former camper and current counselor Chelsea Best said. “And every year I look forward to seeing them.

“If you come once, you’ll never want to leave.”