What a catch, By Brian McGrory
By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist | August 25, 2010
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/08/25/what_a_catch/
To be honest, I never bought into all the hoopla when a group of wide-bodied white guys opened up a summer camp for city kids on a Boston Harbor island a few years back and acted like they had just changed the world.
Give it one season, maybe two, I figured, and all those donors would move on to the next Nantucket fund-raising event for the newest cause célèbre, and poor Camp Harbor View would be dying on the vine.
Boy, was I ever wrong.
The first hint of that came when I drove over a rise and spied what looked like an open-air Cape Cod resort: a shingled great hall where meals were served, a junior-size Olympic swimming pool with a meticulous pool house, manicured ball fields, a climbing wall and acrobatics center, tennis courts, basketball courts, a 150-yard-long pier that held all flavors of boat. All around the camp, the clean waters of Boston Harbor lapped the shore, and beyond it, pristine views of the city skyline.
And most important, there were kids, hundreds of kids — kids riding bikes on smooth pavement, kids playing tennis, learning golf, painting watercolors, practicing dance, swimming laps, paddling canoes.
And then I got a dose of unimpeachable evidence that this was no momentary fad, in the form of a kid shouting, “I caught a fish! I caught a fish!’’ The news quickly rippled down the pier, where I happened to be standing. “He caught a fish!’’ another kid yelled. Someone else: “Oh man, he caught a fish.’’ Yet another person on land: “Hey, everyone, someone caught a fish!’’
And true enough, at the end of the pier, a group of preadolescents were huddled around a fish. The boys were squealing and shouting and pretending to be brave until the moment they weren’t, which was when their fingers came in contact with the slimy scales and they pulled them away in a mix of horror and delight.
The most important contrast was what you couldn’t see, which is where those kids would have been if they weren’t at this camp: surrounded by concrete, sweltering in their houses, playing ball at city parks that have been visited by random violence. Here, there are no gang colors. There’s no violence, no graffiti. The police have never been called.
Cara Gould is the director of the camp. She worked for a decade with gangs in Los Angeles and has developed a unique view of a world in which hope and reality routinely collide. She spoke as the camp wound down for the summer.
“It’s crazy,’’ she said of the impact on the kids. “I thought we’d give four weeks of fun for those who don’t have a lot of it. But it blows me away how deep the impact on some of the kids is, and how connected they feel to the place.’’
The campers, 11 to 14, arrived every morning by bus between 8:30 and 9 from their neighborhoods in Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury. They were served three healthy meals a day. They left, exhausted, at 6. There were two four-week sessions, each serving 380 kids.
Tom Menino thought of it. Businessman Jack Connors scouted the spot and raised the money. John Fish got his company, Suffolk Construction, to build just about the whole thing in less than four months. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston, one of the city’s most vital organizations, manages the operation. The goal now is to endow it so it continues as long as it is needed, which is probably forever.
The counselors ignore the bad and dwell on what the kids do right.
“We try to shower them with positive attention,’’ Gould said. “They get labeled as the bad kid, and everyone treats them as that, then they try to fulfill the role.’’
Imagine that — city kids, poor kids, treated as good kids. Amid the spanking new buildings, the beautiful setting, and the constant activity, that may be the biggest contrast of all.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com. 
