Sundance kids

For 11 years, Ray Empson worked to keep America beautiful. Now he wants more children with severe illnesses and disabilities to be able to enjoy some of that scenery.

Empson, who until last August led Stamford-based Keep America Beautiful Inc. is the new trail boss of the Hole in the Wall Camps Inc., created by Westport resident Paul Newman to provide weeklong summer camp sessions for children with cancer, hemophilia and other severe ailments or disabilities.

Each camp includes a medical clinic where children can receive treatment during their session. At the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Ashford, Yale-New Haven Hospital provides medical support for campers.

Since the Ashford camp”™s establishment in 1988, some 17,000 children have attended, and 1,000 more are expected this summer.

Another 100,000 children have attended other Hole in the Wall Camps in the United States and abroad, and more camps are in the planning process, including one revealed last week for the metropolitan Kansas City, Mo., area sponsored by NASCAR driver Kyle Petty and his wife Pattie.

Due to the medical facilities camps must create, it costs more than $25 million to establish a camp.

“The history has been that these camps need a champion who gathers about them a critical mass of people to initiate and sustain the momentum,” Empsom said.

In the case of the Ashford camp, that champion was Wilton resident Raymond Lamontagne, who oversaw the capital campaign to establish the first camp, which included a $5 million donation from a Saudi Arabian donor.

Lamontagne remains chairman today of the organization”™s board of advisors; other local directors include Weston resident and actor James Naughton; and Leo Nevas and Dennis Poster of Westport.

Local corporate supporters of the Hole in the Wall Camps include Greenwich-based Nestl̩ Waters North America and, of course, Westport-based NewmanӪs Own.

The camps have come a long way ”“ last month the American Brands Council cited the Hole in the Wall Camps as one of the 50 top brands in the country, an accord garnered neither by Nestlé and its Poland Spring brand of bottled water, nor by Newman”™s Own.

For the 2006 fiscal year, the Ashford camp received $8 million in direct public support, and closed the year with $63 million in net assets.

Charities raising money for the Ashford camp this year include the 130-mile Angel Ride bicycle trek through Connecticut on Memorial Day weekend; a Wild West horseback exhibition June 21 by the Granby-based Connecticut Renegades; and the Kayak for a Cause benefit, with paddlers crossing Long Island Sound for the camp and four other local charities.

The Ashford camp holds its open house March 29 in advance of the nine weekly sessions it will run June 6 through August 24. Alumni campers also have the opportunity to attend reunions at Big Apple Circus performances in April in Boston, and in October in New York City.