Inner-city kids' camp unites legacies of two from the suburbs

As far as anyone knows, Frank Lentz never met Shirley Peterson, and he died 30 years before her.

Yet they seem to have been separated by no more than a couple degrees: Both spent their professional lives in the Barrington area, both worked with children, both were nature lovers committed to conservation and both combined those passions in extensive involvement in Scouting.

It's even likely their clienteles overlapped, as Lentz was a child psychologist in the Barrington and Dundee schools and Peterson, one of the first women pediatricians in the area, ran her practice in Barrington for more than 30 years.

So it's not as improbable as it seems that their legacies could end up posthumously joined in a new endeavor that honors their individual commitments to children and nature.

Inspired by his father and the fulfillment of a long-cherished dream, Frank's son, Eric Lentz, and his wife, Deanna Hallagan, are building a camp near Lake Geneva, Wis., for inner-city kids and kids who've survived cancer. The camp is on land formerly owned by Peterson.

"History's strange," said Eric Lentz, 53, who was raised in Elgin and lives in Skokie. "There are millions of people who do tremendous things, but who are forgotten. This is about remembering their two legacies so they won't be forgotten."

Lentz knows a thing or two about trying to put down something that will stick around longer than you do. He won't admit it, but creating Rustic Falls Nature Camp is in some ways about securing his own legacy, too.

About five years ago, Lentz was diagnosed with colon cancer that had already spread to his liver. He was given no more than 16 months to live. Five rounds of chemotherapy and drug cocktails shrunk the tumors but, two years ago, he had surgery to remove half his liver in the hope it would grow back cancer-free. Last month, he had the other half removed and says that seemed to have been successful so far.

Friends say such an unrelenting reminder of his mortality has propelled him in his quest to set up the camp, which he hopes to open next summer. He's done much of the labor himself, with help from a legion of volunteers, as well as his wife and their kids, Sarah, 16, and Patrick, 11.

"He had this really bad prognosis - and everybody was thinking, 'Dude, you need to take it easy, not wear yourself down,'" said Dave Connolly, an electrician and friend who's volunteered to help build the camp. "Part of the whole thing that is keeping him so strong and able to battle this cancer is because he's doing this camp."

He runs a swimming pool business, but Lentz and his wife both have backgrounds in working with troubled or disabled children. Years ago, Lentz set up physical fitness programs for the disabled through the Easter Seals Jayne Shover Center in Elgin.

His vision is for Rustic Falls to be a place where inner-city children can experience nature and where cancer survivors and their families can relax get a brief leisurely respite from doctor's appointments and stresses.

By all accounts, relaxation isn't part of Lentz's own vocabulary.

Friends are in awe of his work ethic and determination as Lentz, with help from volunteers, has spent the last couple of years clearing brush, building trails and restoring a pre-Civil War cobblestone house on the property that will serve as camp lodging.

Fred Doolittle, a 79-year-old retired carpenter in the Lake Geneva area who's done work on the cobblestone house since reading about the project a local paper, visited the property just two days after he'd last been there. In those two days, Lentz had built a stairwell out of railroad ties and small boulders outside the house.

"He is just strong as an ox and really moves," Doolittle said. "I'm just really impressed by the way he drives along."

Shirley Peterson's nephew, Tom Kreuzinger, said Lentz is the hardest-working person he's ever met. A Florida native, Kreuzinger got to know Lentz a few years ago when Kreuzinger started spending his summers in Wisconsin, partly to be closer to his aunt as she was getting up in years.

Kreuzinger watched admiringly as Lentz built a vacation home next door to Kreuzinger's in Burlington, Wis.

Peterson, who never married or had children of her own, died last January at 86. She had bought a farm in the area decades earlier and over the years planted more than 60,000 trees, built a pond and restored one cornfield to native prairie, her nephew said.

Peterson would go on to donate the property to a foundation to make sure it would remain undeveloped. But there was still the question of what to do with the badly dilapidated, overgrown cobblestone house.

"I refused to just put it on the market for some Tom, Dick and Harry to buy it," Kreuzinger said. Eventually, Lentz pulled together the funds to purchase the home under the banner of the Frank Lentz Foundation, set up in his father's honor.

The project hasn't been without setbacks. Besides Lentz's ongoing health struggles, county officials made him change some of his plans, requiring him to remove several trees. Mostly, locals have been very admiring of the project, though, often stopping by to help or drop off refreshments for volunteers.

But there's still the ongoing issue of raising money, which is likely to be the major obstacle to opening Rustic Falls. The foundation has less than two years to come up with the $110,000 balance on the home and land, plus money to operate the camp itself. To find out more and how to help, go to rusticfallsnaturecamp.org.

Getting the camp open and keeping it running well into the future is the best way, Lentz believes, to honor Peterson and his father.

"When I decided to do the camp, I looked deep inside myself and saw that everything I know and I learned and the values I have were from my dad," Lentz said. "I can't even compare to him and to what Shirley Peterson has done."

  <p class="factboxtext12col"><b>For details on Rustic Falls Nature Camp and how to donate, visit <a href="http://rusticfallsnaturecamp.org" target="new">rusticfallsnaturecamp.org</a>.</b></p>   <center><img src="/graphics/rusticfalls.jpg"></center>