A place to just be a kid.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

CAMP UKANDU What: Annual American Cancer Society camp for kids with cancer and their siblings Where: Camp Magruder on the Oregon Coast To volunteer: [phone] or (800) ACS-2345 Contact: American Cancer Society, Camp UKANDU, 330 S.W. Curry St., Portland, OR 97239, [phone] To see a special Web page dedicated to Alden Oberbeck's battle with cancer, go to www.geocities.com/micobeus/oberbeck.html

ROCKAWAY BEACH - "Levity and gravity."

That, says Tanya Beard, a nurse from Eugene and a counselor at the American Cancer Society's annual Camp UKANDU just south of here and north of Tillamook, is what this camp is all about.

"There's nothing else really like it," she says. "It reminds me of why I like people. You see a lot of really good people doing good things, and the kids are phenomenal."

When 11-year-old Alden Oberbeck of Eugene learned seven months ago that he had non-Hodgkin lymphoma, it definitely brought him down to gravity. Shooting bow and arrows, however, along with canoeing and playing in the sand, is all about levity.

And to think, he did not want to come here. Just listen to him five days before camp started:

"Don't really want to," Alden, who began the sixth grade at Cascade Middle School earlier this week, says on a Friday morning in early August.

Who can blame him?

If you were told you had cancer when you were 10 years old, then your mom told you she and your dad would be dropping you off at a cancer camp with a bunch of kids you never met before, would you want to go?

"It's going to be fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!" Michelle Oberbeck tells her son.

Yeah, right.

But here he is five days later, shooting those arrows and saying, "Better. Way better," when asked if camp is about what he thought it would be.

How come?

"I don't know," Alden says with a shrug of his shoulders. "Just is."

Ah, a man of few words.

And one of several young guys and girls who find not only fun and games at this 20-year-old camp, but solace, too.

"This is such an important part of their therapy," says Emily Satterlee, the camp's program director for the American Cancer Society.

A grounding note

Camp UKANDU, a play on the words "You Can Do," is a medically supervised, weeklong camp for children ages 8 to 17 with cancer. It happens at Camp Magruder on the Oregon Coast and is free to all children undergoing cancer treatment or who are within two years of their last treatment. Also, one of their siblings is allowed to attend.

Alden's older brother, Kyle, who shaved his head in support of his brother earlier this year, was going to come, but football practice got in the way.

"I think it's a pretty fun camp - best I've been to," says Xzavyer Cox, 13, of Eugene, who's wearing a T-shirt with other campers' signatures, and who will later this day find himself buried to his neck in sand at the beach. Xzavyer, a student at Madison Middle School, visited the camp for the second straight year. His sister, 15-year-old Anastasia Cox, also has non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.

Camp UKANDU is where kids with cancer come to act like kids again. They come for the arts and crafts, the boating and fishing, the swimming and the archery and the rock-climbing wall. And, of course, to play on the beach.

There's also a Thursday night dance, a talent show, a carnival and, if you're lucky, sleeping in tepees.

The camp was started by the Portland chapter of the American Cancer Society in August 1986 at the Mount Hood Kiwanis Camp in Rhododendron. Forty-eight patients and their siblings attended. By 1989, the number of campers had almost doubled and the camp moved to Camp Yamhill southwest of Portland. By 1990, there were 136 campers attending, and the camp moved to Camp Magruder in 1995 for more space.

This year, about 95 campers attended.

Alden and his family found out about Camp UKANDU while he was receiving treatment at Doernbecher Children's Hospital at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland earlier this year. Most of the kids who attend the camp have received treatment at Doernbecher or Legacy Emanuel Children's Hospital, also in Portland, the state's two main cancer treatment centers for children.

Alden is glad that "Skippy" is here. Also known as John Blalock, he's a nurse at Doernbecher who met Alden there.

"It's impossible to describe," Blalock says of Camp UKANDU. "It's my opportunity to not have to be a nurse with the kids. Here, my job is to make sure they have the best experience possible, and to allow them to be kids."

The toughest thing about being a counselor here - most are nurses or other medical personnel - is when campers don't come back.

That's why the camp has a "Memory Circle," to remember those who have lost their lives to the disease, including Kyle Cooke of Washougal, Wash. The 19-year-old, a camp regular, succumbed to bone cancer on Aug. 5.

"It was kind of a grounding note to start camp off with to remind us why we're here," says Beard, whose camp name is "Ping."

Cooke's camp name was "Drumstick."

He is one of seven campers who did not make it back this year, Beard says.

Call me 'Honey Bucket'

Everyone here has a camp name. Names such as "Drool" and "Dirt," "Otter" and "Lumpy," "Quickdraw" and "Thumper."

And those are just the counselors.

This is what Alden chose as his camp name: "Honey Bucket."

"I just thought of it," Alden says.

It's the name of a, uh, portable toilet company, you know.

"That's why," he says.

Oh.

"Hey, campers!

"Hey, Drool!"

"I need a song. Please remember, if you choose not to sing, you can do a solo the second time through."

Ouch.

These few campers, pulled from their lines outside the main lodge before lunch because they forgot their name tags, finally settle on the "Barney" song.

"I love you ... you love me ..."

Yep. Summer camp is summer camp, cancer or not, with all its fun - and potential embarrassments.

For Alden Oberbeck and the other campers, lunch in the old wooden lodge at Camp UKANDU on this day is grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, carrots and celery and cucumbers, milk and sugar cookies.

And more songs.

"In Tennessee, they go hee-hee-hee ... In Idaho, they go ho-ho-ho ... And in Washing-TON, they go oh-what-fun."

You can almost feel the roll of Alden's bluish-gray eyes.

Now it's time for all campers to form a train and dance through all the tables, hands on the shoulders of the camper in front of you. Little kids. Big kids.

Talk about letting go of your inhibitions.

And what could be more fun than a visit from the "Feathered Duck Fairy," one of the counselors dressed up as a, well, a feathered duck fairy.

"And what did you see on your rounds today?"

"I saw some very clean rooms and some nicely made beds," she says.

Shaved heads and sand holes

After lunch, it's FOB time. That would be "Flat on Bunk," an old summer camp standby designed to encourage young campers to chill out.

As campers hit their cabins for an hour of rest, a couple of counselors, Dirt and Bark, take this opportunity to shave their heads in support of those campers who have lost their hair from chemotherapy.

"Why are you doing that?" a camper asks.

"Shaving your head is the coolest," Dirt replies.

Soon, campers are slipping out of their bunks and wanting to be the next to lose their hair. Alden's already is closely cropped after beginning to grow back from his latest chemo treatment, so he remains flat on bunk.

Not "Sony," also known as 12-year-old Aaron Yaws of Portland, who gets his light brown hair shaved completely off, except for a patch on the back of his head. Aw, what the heck - he has that taken off, too.

"Why did you shave your head, dude?"

"I'm gonna lose it anyway," Aaron says.

"How come?"

"Because I have cancer," he says, referring to the chemo pills he's taking that he expects will make his hair fall out.

Aaron has acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

And now he's digging a massive hole in the sand, having trekked down to the beach with the other 10 boys in his cabin, including Alden, after they put sunscreen on their bald heads.

Alden skirts the edge of what might soon be a giant sand castle, not wanting to get too involved. He's a somewhat shy boy, hit with cancer after being on the planet for only a decade, and he just wants to be a kid.

He doesn't want to talk about having cancer, what it felt like when he found out.

"Don't remember," says Alden, whose last biopsy in July showed his body was clear of the lymphoma for now, when you ask him about his reaction.

"It's just fun," he says, when asked what he likes about Camp UKANDU. His favorite? The archery. Oh, and the canoeing. Oh, and the rock-climbing wall.

You mean partaking of the daily "Polar Bear Swim" at 7 a.m. in Smith Lake was not your favorite?

"C-c-c-c-c-cold!" Alden says.

Meanwhile, Aaron's sand hole is growing by the second. In fact, he's standing in it now.

"I'm scared I won't be able to get out when a big wave comes," he says.