Profile of Eric Blum for presentation of Volunteer of the Year Award

Neither chronic illness nor physical limitation - nor an eminent career as a medical professional in a distant state - could keep Eric Blum from returning each summer at length to the valley he repeatedly called "his true home."

He first arrived as a youthful and idealistic Junior Counselor with the summer staff of 1986. Because Frost Valley -- unique among all camps -- had its own dialysis unit, Eric could focus on his care of the children assigned to him and not on his own renal disease. He was a superb counselor and was hired back for '87. Before long he was recognized as among the most talented and dedicated camp staffers, and he returned summer after summer, into the 1990s. On this day we honor Eric not so much for those many summers as an excellent Frost Valley staff member, celebration-worthy as they were. We honor him today for what came next. It was only after Eric left the regular staff to devote himself to his career as trauma-care nurse at the Hospital of the University of Virginia, that he -- by his own account -- began to understand what Frost Valley really meant to him. He told camp friends that sometimes, while on shift break at the hospital in Virginia, he would close his eyes and see children playing in the field and smell a campfire. All year long he longed to “come home.” Each spring his trauma room colleagues helped him count down the days before he could return to Frost Valley. He worked out an arrangement, accumulating all of his paid vacation days (and adding not a few unpaid days), and managed to spend an entire month at camp every summer as a volunteer. In that annual month-long stint at camp, he did whatever mundane job needed to be done. Because he knew the camp operation so well, he became a crucial special assistant and relief to the directors, who by this point were his dear friends. Without complaint, nor ever a reminder that he was an unpaid volunteer, he performed the kind of tasks that no one else could do or even thought to do. Yet if you told him the value of what he'd done, he would shrug it off. He spent countless all-nighters supporting the medical staff during emergencies, always the perfectly trained extra pair of hands, always the firm yet calming bedside manner. To describe all this he borrowed a term from the Yiddish, dubbing himself the Camp Schlep. Each September he mailed a "Camp Schlep” t-shirt to those few Frost Valley colleagues whom he deemed flexible enough and willing enough to help camp run no matter what it took. Given Eric’s high standards of voluntarism, those who received these shirts cherished the honor. One year the Schlep shirt bore a slogan that might as well express Eric’s philosophy of life: "We improvise, we adjust, we overcome."

When Eric's final illness had nearly taken him from us, his Frost Valley friends visited him -- the last of these visits to bring to him the award we formally and posthumously confer upon him today: Frost Valley Volunteer of the Year. In his room, on that last day, as he clutched the award to his chest, his visitors could not help but notice that the walls and shelves were covered with his Frost valley mementos: his home here at home there.

Eric Blum epitomized the spirit of giving, of selflessness, of accommodation and sacrifice that is what ultimately makes Frost Valley YMCA the strong and stable organization with the capacity to enhance the lives of so many children and families, including those burdened by chronic illness. It is for this reason that, in addition to conferring on Eric this year's volunteer award, the Frost Valley YMCA Board of Trustees has unanimously resolved to name the award itself in his memory, and thus it shall henceforth be annually given as The Eric Blum Volunteer of the Year Award. We improvise, we adjust, we overcome.