About Us

Camp Good Days and Special Times, Inc. is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for children, adults and families whose lives have been touched by cancer and other life challenges. All of the programs and services provided by Camp Good Days are offered free of charge for the participants, which is only possible through the generosity of so many individuals and organizations and the success of our many special fundraising events.

Camp Good Days and Special Times, Inc. was founded over 25 years ago by Gary Mervis to provide a residential camping program for his daughter, Teddi Mervis, and 62 other children with cancer from Upstate New York, and has grown to become one of the largest organizations of its kind in the world. Camp Good Days was the fourth program of its kind in the country and the first to be started by a layperson.

History

In 1979, Gary Mervis’ youngest of three children, Teddi, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Mervis spent months searching for the best possible medical care for his daughter, traveling from Massachusetts General in Boston to the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco, and also visiting Columbia Presbyterian, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Albany Medical Center, Roswell Park, MD Anderson and the National Institute for Health. Despite all of this, he returned home unable to find the answers he had so desperately been searching for.

It became very evident that the cruelest part of Teddi’s battle was not the craniotomy, chemotherapy or radiation that she had to undergo, but it was the loneliness and the fact that the disease was robbing her of her childhood. So, in late 1979, with the help of many caring and generous individuals in the Rochester community, Mervis founded Camp Good Days and Special Times to give children suffering from cancer, the opportunity to regain some of their lost childhood.

Camp Good Days has expanded over the years and now provides residential camping experiences and year-round support and recreational programs and services for children, adults and their families whose lives have been touched by cancer and other life threatening challenges. Programs are now offered for children with cancer, including children with cancer from 23 foreign countries who have participated in the Doing A World of Good Program; children who have or have lost a parent or sibling to cancer; women dealing with cancer; men dealing with cancer; children with sickle cell anemia; children who have lost a family member to violence; and children who are infected or affected by the AIDS Virus.