Summer campers brighten the day of former director
By Tracy Ouellette
SLN Staff
During a visit to her dad’s home in Florida earlier this year, Mary Montavon, of Waukegan, Ill., noticed how much her father Donald “Don” Scherwat loved his daily trip to the mailbox.
“Dad has dementia and doesn’t get out a lot anymore, so when I noticed he was gone, I was surprised,” she said. “I asked his lady friend, Annie, who he lives with, where he was and she said, ‘Oh, he went to get the mail.’ She told me he loves the mail and waits for it every day. He just lives for it.”
Montavon said she watched her dad when he returned and was touched by the care that went into going through the post and how he opened each piece and read everything.
“It got me thinking about how I could get lots of letters to Dad,” she said. “I can’t write every day and neither can my sister, but there had to be a way. I knew we were going to need some help.”
Montavon said her first thought was to contact the school district in North Chicago where her dad started out as a teacher and eventually moved into administration as the district’s business manager.
“He was there for 35 years, so it was what came to mind first,” she said. “But it didn’t make sense because it was so long ago. Dad’s 89 now and no one at the school would remember him.”
So, she thought a bit more on it, hoping for some inspiration.
“And then I started to think about camp,” she said. “He was the director at Camp Edwards in East Troy in the late 1950s. I can remember how we’d all go up there each summer – Mom and us kids with Dad. We loved it up there and Dad loved his job there.”
With the memories of their time at the camp on Lake Beulah flooding back, Montavon began to wonder if she could ask Camp Edwards for help.
“So, I wrote to Jody (Heimos) and asked if they would be interested in helping out,” she said.
Heimos, the camp’s executive director, responded immediately – and with enthusiasm.
“She contacted us and told me about her dad and how he loved getting mail and wondered if the campers would be willing to write letters over the summer for him,” Heimos said. “I thought it was a great idea and talked to our arts and crafts director, Brigid Broderick, and she was all for it. She just ran with it and led the project at the camp.”
Heimos said Montavon provided all the supplies – paper, cards, envelopes, etc. – and the kids worked on the letters all summer long.
“We had staff members writing too,” he said. “It was one of those cool things all the kids and staff got into.”
Near the end of summer, when camping season wrapped up, Montavon got a call from Heimos.
“Jody said it took us all summer, but we have 290 letters for you,” she said.
He told her how much the kids loved the project and how invested they had become in it over their time at the camp.
“And how they learned so much from it,” Montavon said. “Some of them had never addressed a letter before and had to learn how to fill out an envelope.”
Montavon went up to the camp after the call to pick up the box of letters and was moved to tears at the generosity of heart the young campers showed a man they had never met.
“They wrote such beautiful things,” she said. “They wrote about their camp experience. They wrote about their activities. They shared so much.”
After Montavon got the box of letters home, she began mailing them to her dad. She sends two or three a day and her father has been joyously opening the mail for a few weeks now.
“Annie has been sending me pictures of him opening the letters and it’s just so heartwarming,” Montavon said. “She said he’s been reading them so carefully and is treasuring them.”
She said her dad wants to write everyone who sent a letter back, “But we talked about it and since we really don’t have a way to get a letter back to every child, he’s going to write a letter to Jody and the camp.”
Montavon said she and her family were so grateful to everyone who wrote her dad and wished they all could see the smile on his face when he gets the mail now.
“He gets all these fun letters and it just makes his day,” she said.
About Camp Edwards
Edwards YMCA Camp and Retreat Center is on the shores of Lake Beulah in East Troy. The camp, established in 1929, is a branch of the Golden Corridor Family YMCA.
The camp’s mission statement reads: “Camp Edwards is governed by the same Mission the YMCA established all those years ago, ‘To put Christian principles into practice through programs that build a healthy mind, body and spirit for all.’ Through the general make up of camp, we encourage exercise, creativity and peaceful reflection in the environment that God has created.”
For more information, visit www.campedwards.org.
