Neil Willenson was a student who dreamed of becoming an actor when he met Nile Sandeen, a 5-year-old boy with HIV. At the age of 22 in 1993, Willenson abandoned her Hollywood dreams and founded a camp, One Heartland, so that Sandeen and other HIV-positive children, who were often isolated and experienced the discrimination that accompanied a lack of understanding of the virus and how it was transmitted – could experience the simple pleasures of being children. Now, more than three decades later, this camp is on the verge of closing, because the number of children contracting HIV has plummeted.
In recent years, the camp has served other populations, including diabetic children and LGBTQ+ youth, and the nonprofit that runs it hopes to sell the Minnesota property to another child-focused group, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. Despite the reason for its closure, former campers are sad to see it go. “It’s heartbreaking,” says Dylan Edwards, who attended the camp with his brother Chris, who died of complications from HIV at age 12 in 1999. “But the goal of the camp was for sick kids,” so if there simply weren’t as many anymore, “it’s hard to feel bad about that,” he says. The complete story at Grandstand of the stars worth reading. (More Minnesota stories.)
