Summer Camp Offers Free Full Session to Children of Metro-North Victims
Seven children were left without a father following this month’s tragic Metro-North train crash and Kiwi Country Day Camp in Carmel is trying to make life for those children a bit brighter.
Adam Wallach, the owner and camp director at Kiwi Country Day Camp, reached out to New Castle Supervisor Robert Greenstein soon after the crash looking to get in contact with the victims to extend a generous offer. The camp will be offering scholarships to attend a full eight-week session to all of the young children who lost a parent in the Valhalla crash.
The sessions cost $5,400 per child, but Wallach said that extending the scholarships felt like the right thing to do.
“After the tragedy…we were talking in our office and said maybe we could help make life a little bit easier for the families over the summer and provide the children with something to look forward to,” Wallach said. “Obviously, it will never replace the loss of their parents; it’s just a small way that we can help their family through a difficult time.”
Kiwi, which Wallach describes as an authentic and traditional summer camp, offers a variety of activities to children including zip-lining, archery, art lessons, swim lessons and traditional sports such as basketball and baseball. Wallach hopes that by extending the offer, the children will have a happy memory to look back on.
Three of the passengers killed in the first car of the train, which struck an SUV driven by Edgemont resident Ellen Brody at the Commerce Street crossing, left behind young children. Chappaqua resident Robert Dirks, 36, and Eric Vandercar, 53, of Bedford each had a son and a daughter while New Castle resident, Joseph Nadol, 42, left behind three children. Each of those children are not only eligible to attend Kiwi Country Day Camp this summer, but will be invited back each subsequent summer for as long as they want, Wallach said.
“I think, in general, when anything happens like this, everybody feels bad and everybody wants to try to help in some way and unfortunately there’s not really a lot that people can do during the situation,” said Wallach. “For me, the only way that I can think to help these families in any meaningful way to try to make their lives easier was to provide their kids with a great experience and something memorable that they can do this summer.”
Wallach is not the only one who has stepped up to help the families following the crash. Pleasantville resident Maggie O’Connor has been offering free therapy sessions for anybody affected by the tragedy. Also, a campaign started by Chappaqua Cares, Chappaqua Shares to collect donations for the families of Dirks and Nadol received such an overwhelming response that the organization needed to ask for donations to be temporarily halted.
A fundraiser on the crowd-funding website YouCaring.com for the Robert Dirks Memorial and Family Fund has collected more than $80,000 from nearly 1,000 donors in a little more than a week. The original goal was to raise $63,000.
In a comment on the fundraiser’s page, Dirk’s widow, Christine Ueda, shared her surprise at the level of support she and her children have received from community members.
“When I was first facing the reality that Robert was gone, I felt scared and alone,” she wrote to supporters. “You have made me realize that there’s an incredibly supportive community out there with open arms and hearts.”
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