Smart Trax at Camp Haze 2003-2003

ready and drive to the camp. I was out of the room by 8:30 and Dave was all ready to go, thankfully! We parked the van and cut across the commons area over to the dining hall and arrived there just as the campers were coming down the stairs from breakfast. The kids were saying things like, “Hey, you were here yesterday,” and, “Are you coming back today?” One of the counselors even remembered me and said hello. Once again it was the feeling of having touched someone and making them feel so incredible that made me feel ecstatic about what we were doing! After everyone had passed, David went inside the dinning hall and came back out a few minutes later and told me that Janice would be very happy to talk to me but that it would be about ten minutes. So in the mean time I was thinking about what I should be asking her and I became distracted with the camp itself. The surrounding environment was so perfect that it just made me stop and take a deep breath and made me ready for what was ahead. When Janice came out of the dining hall David spoke with her a bit before I did. During their conversation, Janice requested that MJ perform the song, “Inline Boy” for the kids because last year, that was one song that really got the kids excited as well as the counselors. David agreed to do it, but the funny thing was that last year after his visit to Camp Haze, Manny said to Dave that he is not a boy really and he wanted to hand the song off to someone who fit it. David agreed with him and they gave it to another One World Artist by the name of Lil Ben. Last year at Camp Haze was the last time that Manny and Joy sang “Inline Boy.” But they had no problem doing the song one more time for the kids. So finally we walked over to a bench that Janice and her husband had given to the owners of the camp as a “thank you” gift for allowing them to provide this opportunity for these children. Of course I was nervous and started off, in my opinion, not too good. But what actually was said speaks for itself.

Dan & Janice Hazelcorn at Camp Haze

I just can’t go on. I don’t have the strength or the energy to fight this anymore,’ and you just want to cave in. That’s why we did it: to help us heal and to help the children heal. You’ll see, through the course of the day as you walk around, the children hugging each other. They don’t see any boundaries, they just want to have fun, they just want to be kids. Most of them don’t even talk about it. Well, you know, you’ll hear a little snippet here and there. One little boy said to me yesterday, ‘Can you tell me about Scott? What was he like? Did hereally love children? Show me his picture. This is so great, so great that you’re doing this for us!’ One little girl said, ‘Can wehave Camp Haze eighty weeks a year? I love being here!’

This is an interesting angle, I thought we were doing this wonderful thing and I felt like I was walking though the streets handing people thousand dollar bills and nobody wanted to take it. I was offering the camp and everyone was saying, ‘I don’t know if we can let the kids go because it’s hard for me to let them go,’ because they lost their husband or they lost their wife or whatever and they focused on the children. So, I said, “You know, this is good for you too, to have some time to yourself to be sad if you want and not have to worry that you’re crying in front of your child or if the child wants to cry and they’re afraid that they’re affecting their parent.’ So everybody has the opportunity just to feel what they feel and this is the place. If they want to cry, everybody gets it. We do have a therapist here. We do not give therapy sessions but she’s here for support. If somebody needs it, that’s what she’s there for: to talk them through it, to help them, and support them.” Next, Janice talks about Manny and Joy’s involvement with Camp Haze.Janice: “Music makes you feel good. Music makes you feel like everything’s going to be “OK.” It takes you to a different place. I think it was part of the healing to not focus on being sad, but just focus on the beat of the music, comrodory, the positive messages of music and you saw!

Janice: “Well last year, MJ performed here and I thought all of the ethnic diversity was just fascinating, and that’s part of what this camp is about. These are children who lost parents in 9/11, not only parents, loved ones in 9/11, and what we realized was every background, every nationality, every economical level was affected, and it wasn’t just one type of people, you know, from people working in the kitchens of the World Trade Center to the top executives making millions of dollars a year. My son loved children. He was like the pied piper; I mean when he was around you had fun. He just loved life and he had said, ‘One day, maybe I’ll own a camp and what I want them to do is strip everything materialistic. Nobody can come with any fancy jewelry, clothes, labels, nothing, and just learn from each other.’ He wanted all different peoples from all parts of the world to learn from each other, to learn about different cultures, to learn that we’re all the same peoples down deep under, and take away all the other outside stigmas that the world puts on us and makes us feel like we can’t accomplish. You work hard no matter who you are or what you are in this life and you’ll get what you want, you just have to really want it, you have to have a passion and so when this happened we decided what better way to memorialize who he was than to have a camp and have these children heal together and have us heal by doing something positive. It’s very easy when something tragic like this happens in your life to curl up in a ball and just say, ‘That’s it! Life’s over for me!