Credit: Shannon Masternak

Maj. John Masternak and his family enjoying some down time at a family camp for military personnel, organized by the Rutgers Cooperative Extension 4-H program

For Maj. John Masternak, the second weekend of September was a peak experience. He spent it with his wife, Shannon; 2-year-old son, Caden; and 5-year-old twin daughters, McKenzie and Kennedy. They fished, worked on crafts, ate meals together, and simply hung out. Some things were lacking, of course; but Masternak didn’t miss them: “There was no TV,” he said. “There was no housework. There was no yard work.”

The Masternaks were among 18 families – 71 people, ranging from infants to grandparents – who took part in the Operation Military Kids Family Camp organized by the Rutgers Cooperative Extension 4-H program at the Rutgers Lindley G. Cook 4-H Camp in Branchville, Sussex County. The camp was open to the families of members of the Reserve, National Guard, and regular military.

Masternak, a professional soldier stationed at Picatinny Arsenal in Rockaway Township, N.J., has been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. But even in his everyday job, he travels constantly. “When I’m home, there is always stuff to do,” he said. At the Operation Military Kids camp, there was nothing to do except be with his children.

Operation Military Kids is a national program supported by the U.S. Army to help military kids cope with stresses caused by a family member's deployment. This past year, the Department of Defense extended a grant to the program to allow parents to attend camp with their children for the first time.

This was the first camping experience that Rutgers’ 4-H program has arranged specifically for military families, but its curriculum is similar to the ones used for other family camping experiences organized by the Rutgers Cooperative Extension and the 4-H Youth Development Program.  The curriculum was designed originally by Alayne Torretta, the 4-H Agent for Warren County, and was modified for military families by Rachel Lyons, her colleague in Morris County.

“We didn’t make the camp all about the military,” Lyons said. “We weren’t doing drills. This was a traditional camp. We just tried to be really intentional about bonding experiences during the weekend.”

There was at least one aspect of camp life that got a military spin, however: raising and lowering the flag. “Normally, we would have a group of kids doing that, but we had a military parent partner with kids to raise the flag every day and lower it every night. At the end of camp, we had just military parents do it in complete precision with no vocal commands. It was really, really neat.”

Shannon Masternak seized on the idea of going to the camp when the Morale, Recreation and Welfare Office at Picatinny Arsenal told her about it.

“I can’t say enough good things about it [the camp],” she said. “I didn’t have to plan the next meal. I didn’t have to make beds in the morning because we were in sleeping bags. We were really able to concentrate on the kids and have a good time.”

Lyons is hoping to run another camp for military families in 2010. “It is important to give the families chance to reconnect and to make the kids feel special,” she said. “They’ve given up a lot. The sacrifices they’ve made are considerable.”

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