
Camp Sunshine campers lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Vinnie recounts Camp Sunshine’s last amazing day in our nation’s capital! It was packed with activities that were both educational AND fun…
The crunch of cereal or the pop of the toaster in our hotel meeting room might have served as the alarm clock for most of us by morning three – Saturday morning. Even though a fast-paced & jam-packed first two days might have left anyone a tad tired, we needed to be awake this particular morning as we would touring the White House. After a security sweep of our bus, we were permitted to drive into an area that had not seen civilian car traffic since September 11th. This afforded all of our campers a shorter than normal walk to & through the security house just before entering the East Wing of the White House. Tour Guide Linda had shared some interesting facts about the photo portrait work that flanks visitors as they enter the east wing. Depicting recent events that included the President or that were hosted at the White House in one capacity or another, these photos, like the one capturing the White House Easter egg hunt, are regularly changed out for more current ones. This makes them the most frequently ‘freshened up’ framed work in the entire White House.
The rest of the Presidential residence – from the State Dining Room to the East Room houses some remarkable pieces of artwork that have hung in place (or close thereto) for several decades if not a century plus. In fact, there’s one portrait, hanging atop the fireplace in the famous green room, of Benjamin Franklin that requires such means to preserve it, that the windows that let the natural light pour into that room were fitted with specially-designed thermal-pane windows to help mitigate UV rays & assist in regulating the room temperature. We wrapped up our White House experience with a photo near the north lawn, courtesy of our personally assigned uniformed Secret Service officer, James’ iPhone.
Next Stop: Vietnam War Memorial. Arriving to the, the Vietnam War Memorial, our attentions were drawn to a statue of Three Servicemen and the detail put into this incredible bronze work of representational art. Another bronze memorial, honoring the women who served in this war -most of whom were nurses- sits just a few hundred feet away. The Vietnam Women’s Memorial statue depicts three uniformed women with a wounded soldier. One of the women is looking up as though keeping a sharp eye for the medical evacuation helicopter. This was an incredibly moving sculpture. A few of the campers took advantage of the printed registries at either end of the wall to look up family & friends of their parents & grandparents whom were lost in this nearly 19-year-conflict. After carefully navigating the crowd & respecting some of the mementos left by loved ones of other fallen Vietnam soldiers, and with the help of his wheelchair driver, fellow camper Stacey McVay, first time camper DeVonte Yarbrough was able to locate the engraved name of an extended relative on the wall.
While we reflected on this experience, we boarded the bus to head due east across town to Union Station. Taking six years to complete from the date of their 1901 joint announcement by the Pennsylvania and B&O Railroad companies until its 1907 ribbon cutting, Washington D.C.’s Union Station serves Amtrak, the Washington’s Metro subway trains, as well as commuter rail lines. According to Linda, the most amazing tour guide ever, the architect for Union Station was inspired by a few varied architectural styles as evident in the arches of the exterior & main facade versus the great vaulted spaces of the interior. Interesting little factoid: When the HVAC systems for Union Station were being significantly upgraded (circa 1988), the air conditioning repair crews found antiquities & artifiacts in shafts & tunnels that had not been opened since the building’s creation.
On this particular afternoon Camp Sunshine represented just 30 people of the 32 Million who visit Union Station each year. Most of us enjoyed a lunch in the food court of the station which sits 3 stories below ground level and used to be the basement of Union Station. – where it then served as final destination of the runaway Pennsylvania Railroad train, Federal Express in January 1953 when it lost braking power and breezed through the station platform and hopped the tracks and plummeting to the basement. Hey, see what you can learn when you take time to read the bronze plaques around the building? Speaking of learning, two Smithsonian museums awaited us as the next stops. Campers & counselors were then given a choice … what to do with the hour & 45 minutes we had: National Museum of American History or National Museum of Natural History??
There’s literally so much to see, do and learn at both, you would need an 8 hour day in each to get through everything. Tough choice.
This blogger spent that time in the Museum of Natural History. Fascinating and daunting. Among some amazing things in the hall of fossil & bone was an impressive illuminated column outlining the periods of prehistoric earth – from Proterozoic Eon to Ordovician, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Truly fascinating and hard to pronounce stuff! One could spend almost the entire afternoon in just the fossil exhibit… and I almost did. Fortunately, a camper reminded me that there was a special exhibit upstairs featuring the Hope Diamond. This is a 45.52 carat VS1 clarity with natural deep grayish blue and a ‘cushion antique brilliant’ cut. Wow, I don’t know what any of that meant but the placard was very informative. Now this was the day before Mother’s Day. Any chance I could ‘borrow’ this Hope Diamond thingy and get it gift wrapped to bring back to Atlanta? No, but hey, Mom, I tried. Anyway, diamond-less and tired, we all went back to the bus. Rest up & clean up. It was Hard Rock Cafe for dinner & taking in a show at Ford’s Theatre.
Now the Hard Rock Cafe is like any other Hard Rock Cafe, but to accomplish dinner with 30 people and be out of there in time for the show by 7:30? Very impressive Sally, Tenise & Linda …very impressive.
Stepping through just a bit of history, Ford’s Theatre hosted Liberty Smith. This was a delightful musical of the lesser known, in fact completely fictional, influence of a young man named Liberty whose childhood friendship with George Washington, apprenticeship with Benjamin Franklin & inadvertent leadership of, you guessed it, the Sons of Liberty, all carved America’s path through the Revolutionary War. In this production, some animated history blends well with some very creative scripting & scoring played out for us across a uniquely designed multi-level & layered set.
Laughter abounded while performance art & history were cleverly combined. This was indeed a fun & patriotic way to mark our last night in D.C.
Thank you so much to our guest blogger, Vinnie Skelly, for sharing his adventure with us!

Camp Sunshine campers and volunteers outside the White House