Seward County residents were among those making memories and building friendships this summer at Camp CoHoLo.
Camp CoHoLo, whose name stands for courage, hope and love, gives children with various cancers and blood disorders a true summer camp experience. Open to any child who is in remission or currently going through treatment, the camp is filled with activities and opportunities to connect.
Among those involved this year were first-time camper Evelyn Greisen of Seward and camp counselor Callie Carraher, a Milford High School Class of 2020 graduate.
Carraher is in her second year volunteering as a camp counselor. She recently moved from Milford to Omaha and is attending graduate school online through Missouri State University, where she is studying to become a child life specialist.
Last year, she began volunteering at the camp to gain a better understanding of the field she hopes to enter.
“I will work with a lot of kids in oncology, and just sick kids in general, and I wanted to gain a better understanding of how their minds work and how they view life,” she said. “That was the main goal last summer, and it’s definitely shifted after creating those relationships with those kids and just showing up for them every year.”
Now, she says the relationships she has built with campers are what keep bringing her back.
“I’m a huge kid person, so it’s really fun to build those relationships with them, and then coming back a second year, just to get to see them again, and they remember you, and it’s like you are best friends all over again,” she said. “As a camp counselor, we’re there to hang out with them, get them involved, help them have a great time and just lift their spirits and treat them like a normal child.”
Carraher said the camp gives children a chance to leave the stresses of illness behind.
“That’s nothing a child should have to go through,” Carraher said. “The whole goal of camp is to give them an opportunity to just be a kid and have fun and not worry about medical appointments or their illness or anything like that. For some of them, it's their only time during the whole year that they get to do something fun like this.”
Working with campers has also taught Carraher how resilient children can be.
“They’re very resilient,” she said. “Even if they are sick, they’re still a kid, and they still have so much energy, and they want to be a kid, and they want to hang out with peers and have fun.”
One of those campers was 10-year-old Evelyn Greisen of Seward, who attended Camp CoHoLo for the first time this year.
Evelyn, who will begin fifth grade at Seward Middle School this fall, has been in remission from leukemia for the past eight years.
“We celebrate her remission every year like a birthday,” her mother, Jody Greisen, said.
Children from across the Midwest attended the camp, which gave Evelyn the chance to meet new friends. There were several nurses on site, allowing Evelyn to reconnect with nurses she knew from previous hospital visits.
She even met another camper who had the same form of cancer she did.
“It’s teaching them that it’s okay to talk about it and share their experiences and have a good time together," Jody said.
Evelyn especially enjoyed archery, a dance, crafts and laser tag at the camp. She and her peers even got the opportunity to practice soccer with the Creighton soccer team.
“I liked when they blew up water slides, and we got to play on them and swim in the pool,” Evelyn said.
For campers and counselors alike, Camp CoHoLo provides a week focused not on diagnoses or treatments, but on friendship, fun and the chance to simply be a kid.
“It was just a good way for these kids to feel like kids,” Jody said. “There were kids there who, really, this might be the only camp they can attend, because they need the medical staff there to be around to help them with meds and all the other stuff. I think it’s a great idea, and she had a great time and wants to go next year already.”
