Making History
Camps 'R' Us is a new company, but we've been involved in summer day camping for over 15 years.
Our founders, Joanne and Gary Turnier, were struggling to make ends meet. The year was 1990, and Joanne had recently become a Registered Nurse, working 12-hour overnight shifts in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the former Nassau County Medical Center. Gary was a school teacher ad P.S. 68Q in Ridgewood, Queens during the day, and moonlighted as a musician on the weekends. As most parents know, caring for two children (ages 6 and 9) is no easy task, especially when working a full-time job.
Fortunately, Joanne and Gary made it work. They made the children their number one priority, and focused on education, extra-curricular activities, and sports rather than money, food, and clothing. During the school year, things were easier, because the kids were out of the house for eight hours during the day, allowing Joanne to catch up on the sleep she missed while working the night before. Gary had recently started the Holy Family After School Program, where children could do homework, play games, and give their parents extra time in the evenings to finish work and pick them up. He had previously supervised similar programs for the New York City Board of Education.
Once the summer of 1991 arrived, things got a little crazy. To earn extra money in previous years, Gary had been the supervising physical education teacher at summer programs in New York City called the Big Apple Games. Since Joanne now worked full-time, the children needed someone to watch them. So began a string of phone calls to relatives, neighbors, friends, and babysitters that ultimately helped care for them, but only for half the summer.
Discouraged, Gary and Joanne called a number of summer camps in the area to see what the going rates were, and if they could enroll their kids for at least half the summer. To their surprise, camps were charging more than Gary earned from working during the summer. He and Joanne concluded that he would spend the rest of the summer at home with the children.
However, it seems that daily trips to the town pool, bowling alley, park, and movie theater were expenses that Joanne and Gary had not considered. Not only did Gary's summer salary stop, but the additional expenses made matters worse. Something was wrong with this situation. "How do other families like us make it work?," Gary wondered. "Why isn't there an alternative to these expensive summer camps?"
The truth is, there was no such place. Sure, there were inexpensive summer day camps, but most of them operated only half the day, out of a park with no buildings, or only offered limited sessions. These were not solutions to the Turnier's problem. So, Gary and Joanne concluded that their only solution would be to create a summer day camp of their own, that offered families affordability, convenience, and excellent services.
A year and a half later, after writing an extensive manual, obtaining licensing information, and proposing the idea to their local Parish, Holy Family Summer Camp opened in the summer of 1993. Since then, Holy Family has been joined by St. Barnabas Summer Camp and Holy Name of Mary Summer Camp. In 2005, Joanne and Gary organized themselves as Camps 'R' Us, New York LLC and opened another campus in Baldwin at St. Christopher's. The four campuses are now unified as Camps 'R' Us, and are stronger than ever.
To this day, Joanne and Gary realize how difficult it is raising a family on Long Island. The economy dictates that parents must work, but they are still faced with the same problem. Families need the convenience, affordability, and excellence that Camps 'R' Us provides, and we are happy to be at your service.