An Autumn Marathon for the Children of Summer
Jeremiah, 19, didn't feel well one day eleven years ago. While in third-grade at Parkway School, he vomited and lost consciousness. Paramedics rushed him to Greenwich Hospital. Doctors performed emergency surgery and found a malignant brain tumor. "Like someone said, 'Tag, you're it,'" John recalled. "The weight of the world struck at once." But in the northeastern Connecticut town of Ashford, 100 miles away from the McCarthy home, counselors at the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp came calling. Actor Paul Newman and his wife, actress Joanne Woodward, founded the camp in 1988 for children with cancer and other serious diseases, for whom it is free of charge. The haven is named for the outlaws in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," but Mary-Beth, John's wife and Jeremiah's mom, just calls it "Shangri-La."