Meet our Nurses!

All of our staff members play a vital role in how successful a day at Camp is. But there’s one group of staff members in particular whose role is probably one of the most important ones at Camp. Everyday, our nurses are hard at work sorting and distributing meds to all the campers at designated times and making sure everyone, including staff, are safe and in good health for the day’s activities. We’ve got some amazing nurses on Summer Staff this year and we thought it’d be nice to introduce them to you!

Jamie Berryhill
Nurse Jamie is from Rogersville, Alabama. This is her first ASCCA summer and we’re so excited to have her on board! Her nursing career spans across 22 years, her experience being in OB GYN, she was a school nurse for 18 years (eight of those years she served students with disabilities), and after that she worked for a company doing statewide immunizations. She actually heard about camp from one of her coworkers. “I knew when I interviewed with Abbey that I wanted the job because I just love working with the special needs population.”

Not only has she been working hard, but Nurse Jamie’s been playing hard too. As part of her ASCCA bucket list, Nurse Jamie went down the Zip Line for the first time a couple of weeks ago! The Waterslide and Tubing are up next! Every weekend Nurse Jamie says she goes home and shows everyone pictures, and tells them about her week at Camp. “They’re probably all bored with me now, I talk about it so much,” she laughed. Even though it’s her first summer with us, she fits right in.

As the weeks have gone on, Jamie says bonding with the campers has become a lot easier. “ I kind of feel like the mother of everybody because I’m so much older than everyone,”she said. So far, she says her favorite week has been our current session, Mobile Rotary Week but little does she know, there’s a lot more fun to come before the summer ends!

Tyler Hoyt
Nurse Tyler is from Birmingham, Alabama! This is his third ASCCA summer, but he originally started off as a counselor. He returned last summer as nurse since he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do after graduation. Once the summer ended, he worked for Princeton Hospital back in Birmingham for about eight months, but soon realized he wanted something different!

It was about that time for Camp to start again, so he quit that job and is back as a nurse again this summer! He heard about camp from twin counselors Christian and Chandler Thomason, who he’s known for about 10 years now. “Being a counselor is when I really got it at Camp,” he said. “It changed my perspective on everything; how you treat people and how you should go about your day in general.” There was one moment during his time as a counselor that Tyler says everything clicked.

He had a nonverbal camper who didn’t really show much emotion all week and he just had a really hard time getting him to different activities and what not. But on the last night during the slideshow, Tyler says his camper’s picture came across the screen and no one else was really cheering for him. “But I was cheering for him and he reached over and grabbed my hand. He hadn’t acknowledged me hardly at all that week. But when he reached over and grabbed and my hand, I cried because it was just so awesome,” he said. Those experiences and life lessons are what Tyler says influenced his decision to come back as a nurse. During Session 7, he’ll return to his ASCCA roots and work as a counselor again!

Abbey Murray
Some of you may already know Nurse Abbey! She’s our Director of Health Services and full time nurse we have on staff. Abbey is originally from Greenville, Mississippi! Her first ASCCA summer was in 2002 when she worked on Program Staff. In the summers following, she held several other Program Staff positions and even worked as a Unit Leader with our current Program Director Amber Cotney!

She went on to graduate from Mississippi State and moved to Colorado for about five to six years, before going to Nursing School in St. Louis. Upon graduating from Nursing School, she worked in High Risk Labor and Delivery in inner city St. Louis until she decided to do labor and delivery as a traveling nurse. In 2013 she applied to be a Camp nurse and then became Director of Health Services soon after, but she still does some labor and delivery on the side! As someone who’s held several positions on summer staff, Abbey feels like she brings a unique perspective in that she understands what the counselors need from their nurses, and she does her best to deliver that.

In regards to the counselors this summer, Abbey expressed how impressed she is. “The staff just seems to be getting better every year,” she said. “The male counselors, especially, have just shocked me at how good they are! Females naturally have that motherly instinct but the guys have really impressed me this summer.” As a full time staff member, Abbey lives onsite with her husband Quillie, whom she met at Camp, and their son Moss! She says that she and Quillie still pinch themselves just thinking about how they met here and are now back, raising a family. “It’s just awesome to see how life comes around full circle,” she said.

Sean Jaco
Nurse Jaco is from Huntsville, Alabama and like Nurse Abbey, he is no stranger to the ASCCA family! His first ASCCA summer was around ‘87 or ‘88 when he worked as a counselor. He came back the following years and worked as a unit leader then program staff, returning in ‘94 as a Head Counselor. As time went by, he started a family, went back to school for Nursing, and returned in the summer of 2013 to work as a nurse. Out of all the positions he’s held, Nurse Jaco says that prior to being a nurse, he really enjoyed being a counselor because he got to be more hands on with the campers.

Though not completely, he feels like he gets some of that back serving as a nurse, since he does spend so much time in the cabins.Needless to say he just couldn’t stay away! Many people who’ve worked at ASCCA talk about the moment where the light bulb went off and they finally got it. For Nurse Jaco it was the summer of ‘88 during Mobile Rotary Week, with camper Donovan Harrison. Donovan has severe cerebral palsy and at the time, used a pointer to select words and communicate with those around him. Nurse Jaco spoke mentioned how he and Donovan shared similar characteristics, one being their love for writing. “That was the week I realized, Donovan and I had a lot of the same brain,” he said. “Though I was blessed with different physical abilities…on the inside, we were the same!” Donovan and Nurse Jaco are still friends to this day and he even served as the best man in Donovan’s wedding!

As he’s returned to Camp over the years, Jaco expressed how great it’s been to see how much the camp has evolved! Referring to the ASCCA Achievements we do at lunch everyday, “I can remember when we only had four because we just didn’t run nine or ten programs a day, back then,” he said. “But it’s been really awesome to see those.” He also talked about how impressed he was with the Dunn Center and the sensory room located for our campers with Autism, as well as the new OutPost building! “Things like that really do enhance the camper experience,” he said.

He used the greek word “Agape” which means ”brotherly love” to describe the atmosphere at camp, as he talked about how people on staff are from all different walks of life, but can come together and work as a team for a purpose bigger than themselves. “And if you leave here and you weren’t brothers when you got here, you’re brothers when you leave.” Jaco says it’s that brotherly love and camaraderie that keeps him coming back. “This is kind of where I come back and recharge my batteries and then I’ll be ready to go again, for a while,” he said. We’re so excited to have Nurse Jaco back at Camp this summer!

Thanks to our amazing Nurses Staff for all that they do. Keep up with our nurses througout the summer on Flickr,Facebook,Twitter, Instagram and right here on our website!

Jasmine Reed, PR
Camp ASCCA 2017
Session 5