New AccuDock floating dock for Camp Sunshine installed in memory of baby girl

Diane Van had been involved with Camp Sunshine all her life, but 2019 was supposed to be a special year. She was looking forward to showing off her newborn daughter, Delia, and celebrating her birth at the annual summer camp for children and adults with physical and developmental disabilities. But that never came to pass. Delia was stillborn on July 6 that year, eight days before her due date.

“It’s always that next week, and I knew it was coming up and something I was looking forward to,” Van said. “I was one week away from my due date.”

It was a devastating turn of events for Van, her husband Justin and their close friends and family, many of whom shared a common bond through their longtime affiliation with Camp Sunshine.

“We were talking about what can we do next? What good can come from this?” Van said. Her brother, Don Michael Lazarus, suggested raising money for Camp Sunshine, specifically for a floating dock, which would be known as Delia’s Dock.

Each year during camp, some of the volunteers take campers on a ride around Lake Tangipahoa at Percy Quin State Park in a loaned pontoon boat. Lazarus is one of several volunteers who assist the campers, some of whom use heavy, motorized wheelchairs, onto the boats. “He’s usually down here working and it’s really hard,” Van said. “It’s really hard and physically challenging.”

An AccuDock floating dock would make the boat rides easier and safer, she said. Van, her friends and family and Camp Sunshine supporters immediately went to work on fundraising, and over the past five years, they accumulated about $25,000 to go toward the purchase of a new dock.

While all of that was going on, A.B.A.T.E., a local group of motorcyclists who raise money for all sorts of causes to help children, including the Southwest Mississippi Children’s Advocacy Center, started making yearly donations to Camp Sunshine.

Camp director Betsy Murrell mentioned the dock project when she spoke at A.B.A.T.E.’s monthly meeting in November, and the club’s members gave her a check and discussed all the ways they could help with the project.

Ronnie Bourn of Brookhaven, a trucker and A.B.A.T.E. member, offered his time and fuel to drive to Pompano Beach, Fla., and bring the dock to Percy Quin. Other members who work in construction offered to put the dock together.

“We found out about this and we just jumped on board,” Bourn said. A.B.A.T.E. secretary Emily Copeland said the organization’s members were happy to lend their resources and expertise to the cause.

“When I went to get the check this year, we talked about camp, and Emily called me a month ago and talked to me about it,” Murrell said.

A.B.A.T.E. members sweltered under a blazing sun Saturday to install the floating dock at Percy Quin State Park for Camp Sunshine.

“This is just such an exciting fruition of the efforts of so many people. We are grateful to these A.B.A.T.E. guys who are willing to come out here one this hot Saturday and do this,” Van said. “Collectively, blood, sweat and tears have gone into this, and we’re just absolutely thrilled that this is going to be ready for Camp Sunshine this year, and this is the first year since COVID where we’re going to get to spend the night.”

Bourn said he and other A.B.A.T.E. members were happy to see their support of Camp Sunshine turn into something that will be a big improvement to the camp experience for years to come. “Anybody with a disability will get years and years of enjoyment out of it. That thing will last forever, man,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming,” Murrell said.

Delia, who would have been 5 by the time the next gathering of Camp Sunshine takes place in July, never got a chance to enjoy the experience like her mother did as a camp counselor in her youth and volunteer in adulthood. But another Van child, Eleanor — also a July baby — has been coming there with her mom all her life.

Years from now, when she undoubtedly becomes a Camp Sunshine counselor, there will be the dock, named after her sister. “We are so appreciative,” Van said. “This has been a dream of ours for five years.”

She recalled Delia’s funeral and how Murrell’s son-in-law, Landon Ratliff, played the guitar during the service and sang, fittingly, “You Are My Sunshine.”

“We have a saying at Camp Sunshine — it’s not goodbye, it’s see you later,” she said.

Source: Enterprise-Journal