Camp caters to kids of 9/11 victims

Julian Checo is anxious whenever his mother isn't nearby. "If you die, who is going to take me to the airport to go live with Grandma?" he asked her recently.

Julian and his brother Jasen, 16, "already are making plans . . . just in case," said his mother, Milly Cabrera, of Bayside.

When Julian asked her that question: "I told him I wasn't going to die yet, but that he doesn't have to worry," she said. "There will always be people around to take care of him."

Their fears are not unfounded. Jasen was 6 and his brother was just 8 months old when their father, Pedro Checo, a vice president at Fiduciary Trust International, died in the attack on the World Trade Center.

"They understand their parent can be taken away without warning or reason," said Beth Culkin, a psychologist with the 9/11 Families Center at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville. The center is geared to the littlest victims of 9/11 and their parents. One morning each week this summer, kids who lost a parent, or whose parent was a first responder, meet for the free camp. They rarely talk about 9/11. They just get to feel like kids.

On a recent Wednesday morning, Culkin surveyed a small group of children, 7 to 14, lying on towels on the grass.

"Breathe in, feel the air filling your body, then breathe out -- very -- very -- slowly," Culkin said. "When you breathe in, think calm. When you breathe out, think relax.

"Anyone here feeling tense? Yes? Why do you think that is?"

The answer came: "I cracked my back."

No, the kids' answers aren't always deeply revealing, but at least here is the chance to ask the questions. And as the children get older they are increasingly asking questions of their own. Lately, Julian has asked his mother how many people were in the buildings, and what the family will see when they go to Ground Zero for the 10th anniversary.

Many of the youngsters express the feeling that they have become identified with Sept. 11 and what happened to their parents. As the 10th anniversary approaches, the approximately 3,000 children who were left without a parent will feel that even more.

"For some of these children, they don't want to be singled out that way," said Fran Furman, director of counseling for Tuesday's Children, an organization whose programs are available to the youngsters who lost a parent on 9/11. "They do want to be like everybody else."

That describes Julian perfectly. For the sixth-grader, the camp is a chance to do things like every other kid. He doesn't want to talk about losing his dad. "It makes me more sad. I don't want to go there. The only time we talk about it is on the anniversary," he said. The camp "makes me forget about things, everything that happened on 9/11."

Here, he feels normal.

As the 10th anniversary commemorations approach, Furman said, "I think for many of our children and families, it's not so much Sept. 11" that worries them: "It's Sept. 12. When the 10th anniversary is over, will they be forgotten? Will the world say, 'Now you should be over it. You've had enough time.' That's a fear many of our families have expressed."

The Long Island camp is one of several throughout the country. Earlier this summer, close to 80 teens from 10 countries who had lost parents to terrorism -- half of them U.S. teenagers who lost a parent on 9/11 -- met for a week outside Washington for Tuesday's Children's Project Common Bond. Last year, the camp met in Ireland.

Sean Jordan, from Westhampton, who turns 10 on Sept. 26, will return to another of the 9/11 children's camps, America's Camp in Massachusetts, for a fourth summer. His older brother, Andrew, 19, will go back as a counselor. Their father, Andrew, was a New York City firefighter.

"This makes everyone feel fun and normal. Usually everyone is looking at kids saying: 'Oh, he's a 9/11 kid. Let's not go near that kid.' "

At the camps, they thrive because they are like everyone else. Andrew wrote his college essay for Iona College about his experience at America's Camp, describing how it became his second family.

Sometimes it is hard for the children to feel like they fit in. Julian left Boy Scouts after a year, his mother said. "I think there are things that are meant for men to do with their children," Cabrera said.

Her son will say: "I wish Dad were here. Things would be different if Dad were here."

In church sometimes, he tells his mother: 'Be quiet now, I'm going to talk to Daddy.' " He doesn't tell her what he says, "It's just me and Daddy talking," he says.