Georgia camp brings friends, support

They sipped Earl Grey tea and munched on pimento cheese finger sandwiches and french fries at the Swan Coach House in Buckhead. The pair, Anna, 10, and Mary, 9, snapped cellphone pictures, complained about younger siblings and talked about how they met.

It was two summers ago at Camp Courage. The camp, held at Camp Twin Lakes in Winder, is an overnight weeklong camp for children with craniofacial disorders.

The camp is a Georgia nonprofit that serves children with medical issues and special needs year-round.

Campers come from all over the country to Camp Courage, and many have scars just like Mary and Anna do, said camp coordinator Claire Aikens.

“Finally, I get to live in my own world,” Mary told her mother when she found out she was going.

The girls have bilateral cleft palates — they were born with two gaps in their lips and gums. The gaps stop just short of their nostrils. The fusion of their mouths didn’t happen while they were developing in the womb, so both girls have had at least three surgeries to connect their lips, gums and noses.

These surgeries have left the girls with red scars between their noses and lips. Their cleft palates make speaking and breathing difficult, and the girls have dealt with bullies, stares and questions their entire lives.

“A lot of campers don’t know anyone else with a craniofacial disorder before camp … it is a place where they can come to be around people like them, where nobody asks them about their scars,” Aikens said.

So when they met at camp, they became instant friends. They pranked the other campers, stayed up late chatting and ate in the dining hall together. At the end of the week, they exchanged contact information and vowed to keep in touch.

“I started to see my child get really down about the bullies at school, but this camp has allowed these kids to feel normal, it has really helped her self-esteem … she knows that she is not alone,” said Susan Bittner, Mary’s mom.

After camp, the girls lost touch. Mary lives in Bethlehem, Ga., near Athens, and Anna in North Druid Hills. One day, Mary, who just finished third grade, was having a rough time with bullies at her school. When she got home, she called Anna for a friendly ear.

“She needed a kid with the exact kind of smile as her to help her,” Bittner said.

When Anna had a surgery this winter, she called Mary on the way into the operating room in tears, and Mary, speaking on her mother’s iPhone, calmed her down.

The girls take turns now calling each other multiple times each week, and they chat for hours, their mothers said.

“Before Mary, Anna felt like she didn’t have any friends,” said Marye McKenny, Anna’s mom. Now, “She knows she can always call Mary. As parents, we try to help them, but we can’t understand the pain of what people say because you look different.”

The story of the girls’ friendship spread back to the folks at the hospital. Meg Flynn of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta visited the camp and met Mary and Anna.

“When I realized how this camp had helped them, it was all too easy to make a few calls to see what we could do for them,” Flynn said.

So on June 28, the girls met at Pretty Please Boutique in Buckhead, picked out matching striped dresses for the first day of school and dresses for the tea party, all donated by the store.

Mary chose a blue dress, her favorite color, and Anna chose a pink one. The two sat at a table with their mothers, and were served from multiple teapots shaped like bumblebees, honey pots and Easter eggs. The lunch was donated by the Coach Swan House.

They were treated like princesses, but for the girls, it didn’t matter where they were.

“I’d like to have lunch with you again,” Anna told Mary, “but next time, let’s go to China Buffet.”