Peacock Camp in Lake Villa celebrates Camp Kindness

LAKE VILLA – It’s the perfect day for summer camp at Peacock Camp: Fluffy, white clouds skirt a sun already climbing higher into the sky, with a lazy breeze to counter the heat it beats down.

Hard-hatted children careen through the air on a zip line above a grassy field dappled with shadows from the canopy of trees above them. Other children stare, undaunted, at the wooden rock wall towering over them as they prepare to conquer it.

In the art room across the path from the zip line and rock wall, however, campers are exercising other equally important muscles: kindness.

For 70 years, Peacock Camp has been a staple in the Lake Villa community. It first opened in June 1949 by the Peacock family as the “Peacock Camp for Crippled Children” and originally was intended as a summer camp for children with polio. Remnants of its original mission remain in the pool overlooking Crooked Lake in the form of a long, narrow ramp that children would use to enter the water.

In 2008, Lake Villa Township bought the camp, and today it continues to serve all children from kindergarten to eighth grade, continuing the legacy left behind by the Peacocks.

“It’s such an honor to be able to do that and keep it such a traditional camp,” camp director Deborah Lee said.

“If you think someone could use a friend, be one,” reads a sign posted on one wall, flanked by original artwork by campers. A paper chain loops around the room, made up of construction paper links decorated by campers dating to 2014, the first year the township reopened the summer camp to the public.

Today, the campers are painting kindness rocks, transforming ordinary rocks into bright, colorful works of art with encouraging messages written on them. It is July 23 and it is Camp Kindness Day – an event celebrated in summer camps across the country, an initiative launched by the American Camp Association to “highlight the practice of intentional kindness that happens every day at American camps.”

This is the second year Peacock Camp has participated in Camp Kindness, stretching it out to a full week focused on kindness, community and philanthropy. For the rest of the week, campers will collect items to be donated to local community organizations dedicated to helping others, including Bernie’s Book Bank, the Lake Villa Township Food Pantry, and Rescue Outreach, an organization rescuing, fostering and finding new homes for pets. Campers also will collect donations for St. Jude’s Children Hospital to be gifted to the hospital along with cards bearing messages of support, encouragement and love created by the campers.

Last year, they raised more than $350; this year, they’ve set their goal at $250, but hope to exceed it.

“I think it helps them understand how people should be treated and how we can help the community,” camp administrator Jen Fielder said. “We see these kids being kind to each other every day, especially with the rock wall, they help each other, and they do team games together. They create their own little friendships, but it’s nice to focus on it just so they know exactly what it means to be part of a community and the culture we’re trying to create here.”

Clad in a hard hat and harness, 5-year-old Grace pauses from her extreme sports to ponder why it’s important to spend the week focused on kindness.

“If somebody needs help,” she finally said, “they can have help.”