Karyn Roseman Miller founded Cactus Day Camp nearly eight years ago in large part because of her own camp experiences beginning with day camp at age 3.
After seven years in Fountain Hills, Cactus Day Camp has moved to Paradise Valley. The camp serves children entering kindergarten through entering seventh grade, with leadership programs for teens.
As a child Karyn spent three summers at Surprise Lake Camp, an overnight Jewish camp in upstate New York, before the family moved from Long Island to just outside Chicago when she was 11. She became a bat mitzvah in Northbrook, IL, at Temple Beth Shalom.
“I remember singing a lot of Jewish camp songs. We always had Shabbat walks, and I spent Shabbat with my older brothers on the tween side (of camp),” says Karyn, adding she attended either day camp or overnight camp throughout her childhood. At age 18 she became a counselor at Banner Day Camp, which wasn’t Jewish, but she says it was in such a Jewish area of Chicago that it had a Jewish feel.
“Those experiences made me want to start my own camp,” says Karyn, who was the principal of Fountain Hills Charter School for eight years. “The camaraderie of camp, the special friends children see just in summer, is so different from school friends. At camp you can be your true self – people don’t judge you at camp; you can be silly or not wear makeup.”
Children’s relationships with camp counselors is also different from their relationships with teachers (and Karyn should know having spent two decades as a teacher or school administrator during the school years and as a camp assistant or associate director every summer).
“There’s a closeness with counselors,” she says. “They are young adult role models, not strict disciplinarians.”
Karyn earned a bachelor’s in Elementary Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master of education in curriculum and instruction from National-Louis University.
She was associate director of Lake of the Woods Family of Camps in Decatur, MI, for six summers before she decided to launch her own camp closer to home. Karyn had moved to Arizona in 1997. She married Gary Miller in Fountain Hills on Oct. 9, 1999, in a ceremony officiated by Rabbi Barry Cohen of Scottsdale’s Congregation Beth Israel.
When she launched Cactus Day Camp, she made safety her number one priority, but she also emphasizes fostering friendships and providing unlimited fun. The camp provides a full-day program five days a week for 2, 4, 6 or 8 weeks. The Cactus experience is about trying new things and gaining new skills in an emotionally and physically safe and noncompetitive environment while gaining independence as well as a sense of belonging, according to her camp brochure.
“Cactus Day Camp has real energy and soul,” says Congregation Merkaz Ha-Iyr Rabbi Erica Burech, whose children spend their summers at Cactus. “Karyn Miller, the exceptional director, cares deeply about the safety of each child. Karyn has put together a spectacular program with a great balance of indoor and outdoor activities. My kids came home happy and exhausted from running around, swimming, water play and they could not wait to give me their … cool art creations. There’s a real sense of belonging and loyalty where campers want to return as counselor aides and counselors.”
