Amy Block reminisced about a wonderful memory from her childhood while donating to the Press-Telegram’s Send-a-Kid-to-Camp fund recently.

Block, now 71, recalled a time when she was 6 and living in Merrick, a beautiful hamlet in Long Island, New York, 30 miles east of Manhattan.

“My parents, Fran and Herb Block, loved to help people, especially children,” Block told me in a phone call last week. “Every summer, my parents would sponsor a child from a neighborhood in inner city New York to live with us for the whole summer. It was part of the Fresh Air Fund program.”

The young girl from New York, Jan, ended up spending seven summers with Amy and her family, which included her two sisters and a brother.

Jan came from a poor family and appreciated everything that she and her family did together, Block said.

“We had a big backyard with a beach nearby,” Block said. “We rode bikes together. We lived near some woods where my brother had built a tree house. We went there a lot. We had a great time with her, spending a lot of time outdoors and seeing nature all over. In New York all she saw was traffic.”

Jan “became like another sister to me,” Block said. “She called my parents Aunt Fran and Uncle Herb.”

Currently, Block is an administrative assistant for WorkSpaces and handles calls and correspondence for 60 clients.

One of her clients is the Long Beach Community Foundation, which is a partner with the Press-Telegram and its sister publication, the Grunion Gazette, in the Send-a-Kid-to-Camp program.

The camp fund sends kids to nearby mountain camps operated by the Big Five youth organizations: Boys & Girls Clubs of Long Beach, the YMCA of Greater Long Beach, Camp Fire Long Beach, the Girls Scouts and Boy Scouts, now known as Scouting America.

Block, who works on the same floor as the Community Foundation in the World Trade Center, said she handled many of the donations coming to the Foundation for the camp fund.

“Seeing these donations from Press-Telegram readers brought back such wonderful memories of my childhood with Jan,” Block said. “In a way, our house became like a camp for Jan. The kid-to-camp program is so wonderful. It was an opportunity for me to give back. It’s also a tribute to my parents who were so kind and loving. They were like camp counselors. I hope all the kids who get to participate in the kid-to-camp fund have an incredible, life-changing adventure.”

We invite our readers to donate to the camp fund until the June 21 deadline. Remember, like most everything else, costs keep increasing. The average cost of sending one youngster to one week at camp is $600.

We invite you to make whatever donation you can to make a child’s dream come true – like it did for that young girl from New York City thanks to Amy Block’s family. We thank you in advance for making a difference in the lives of deserving youngsters.

HOW TO DONATE

Online: Donations with a credit card via the Long Beach Community Foundation’s website are preferred. Go to longbeachcf.org. Long Beach Community Foundation Tax ID number is EIN-20-5054010.

Mail: Send a check with “Send-a-Kid-to-Camp” in the memo, payable To Long Beach Community Foundation, 1 World Trade Center, 8th Floor, Long Beach, CA 90831.

Send a Kid to Camp

Weekly Total: $8,914.45

Campaign Total: $140,716.65 (through June 11, 2026; includes $30,000 matching)

Donors:

Robert Alperin.
Susan Balmer in memory of Tyler Quenneville.
Barbara Bastian.
Larry Boren.
Alexis Dragony.
John and Linda Dunster in memory of Jack and Barbara Dunster.
Don and Wendy Ebright.
Eleanor Eck.
Paul Garman in memory of Dottie Reiner.
Gwen and Steve Gibson.
Judy Gimber.
Craig Hagman in memory of his parents Lynn and Betty Hagman.
Lynn Hermstad in memory of Tom Hermstad.
Andrea Huebner.
John Lopez in memory of Fernando G. Lopez.
William and Dulcie Mc Cracken.
John and Marcia McMullen.
Sheila Ottone in memory of Phil Ottone.
Timothy Rosbottom.
Candice and Larry Stacy.
Ann and Jun Takii in memory of Tom and Debbie Hennessy.
Linda Tate.
Gabriel and Cynthia Tostado.
Delores Van Leuven in memory of Claudia Lowry.
Keith and Pamela Watanabe.
Liz Yacoubian.