Camp aids kids of military overseas

Chaplain Wayne Santos chatted with Lilly Cates, 9, of Steep Falls, Maine, at Operation Purple Camp in Allenstown, N.H., last Thursday. The summer camp is designed for children of military personnel who are deployed abroad. Lilly's father is now home. (TOM HERDE FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)

Chaplain Kip Averett of the Rhode Island Air National Guard had a busy ministry last week. During five days at Operation Purple camp in West Kingston, where children of military personnel deployed far from home try to forget, for a moment, their worries about absent mothers or fathers, Averett prayed with some children each night at lights-out.

"Our state's highly Catholic," said Averett, a Pentecostal minister, in a phone interview, "and we had several children [whose] parents would normally say their prayers with them. They couldn't sleep without them." During the day, he met with some children who wanted to talk out their fears for their parents' safety.

Operation Purple Camp, a program of weeklong summer camps in 36 states this year (Massachusetts ran one last month and one in June), has been sponsored since 2004 by the National Military Families Association, a volunteer group based in Virginia.

At another Operation Purple Camp in Allenstown, N.H., last week, Chaplain Wayne Santos, a Baptist minister in the state's Army National Guard, served his prince of peace in Army fatigues, his reverend's status indicated by a tiny black cross on his shirt and a silver one on his beret.

He traveled the aptly named Podunk Road, which winds under tree canopies and past boulders to the remote 4-H camp in southern New Hampshire, where the Operation Purple Camp was held.

Santos's mission was simply to be available to the more than 100 children, ages 7 to 18.

"It's my professional responsibility as a chaplain for pastoral care," said Santos. "A lot of our work is just being present. You don't have to say anything. Just show that you're there and you care."

Santos's visit coincided with a display of armored military vehicles to reassure the kids about "how protected their families are going to be" while on deployment, said Sergeant Ken Grey, who helped at the camp. Medics also talked on the same topic.

The camp offered the pleasures of most other summer sojourns in the woods, from archery to water sports to arts and crafts. The local sheriff also demonstrated the skills of his department's police dog, Lady, which took some ferocious lunges at a well-padded trainer.

"That was cool," said Jessica Jacques, 17. Her youthful face had a porcelain sheen, but her eyes darkened with memories of adult worry as she talked about her father's nine months in Iraq. He returned home in April.

One of 11 siblings in a Catholic family from East Kingston, N.H., Jessica said she wished she had been able to attend the camp during her father's tour with the National Guard. "I would have felt really, really supported here. It's nice to do something when your parent's away, just to get you distracted, just to make you feel like he was home. . . . It's very hard to talk about it sometimes. . . . I can't really compare it to having someone die, but it's kind of like that memory, like they're not there. It's a loss that is - it stays with you."

But at the camp, she learned how to help other children who were experiencing the ordeal she endured.

"I know how that feels, but I really still don't know what to say. Coming here, I think I'm learning a bit more how to support them [by] getting to know the kids, and then realizing that you have something in common."

Before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the military's notion of supporting families, at least in New Hampshire, "meant a barbecue in the summer and some auxiliary fund-raisers . . . and a Christmas party," Grey said. But numerous needs - including children's counseling - increased after the attacks, Santos said. Deployments to fight two wars contributed to a high divorce rate in the military, leaving grieving children in the wake.

The children's pain is put under a spotlight in school when their peers' parents go to their athletic events and plays. And many of them are consumed with anxiety that a parent may never come home.

In Rhode Island, Averett asked his charges, "If you could draw a picture of your feelings during the deployment, what would it be?"

One picture, he said, stuck with him: a red heart with a black hole in it.

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