One Story of many...

For the past six years, Lyudmila Demikhovskaya has returned to Block and Hexter Vacation Center in Poyntelle, Pennsylvania, to enjoy a respite from her everyday, challenging life.

Disabled from polio since childhood, Luda, as she prefers to be called, is wheelchair-bound. A freak elevator accident six years ago exacerbated her physical limitations and required her to give up her crutches and leg braces for a wheelchair.

 “The camp is the only one that has accepted me in a wheelchair,” says Luda, 65, who immigrated to the United States from Minsk in 1979.

Although Luda requires help for cooking, shopping and bathing, she has managed to devote much of her life to helping others.  Never married, she lives alone. Before her late mother, who had Alzheimer’s, entered a nursing home in 1993, Luda took care of her. They lived together in the one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment Luda has occupied for more than two decades.

With her mother’s death in 2000, Luda’s life changed course – if only temporarily.  She got a part-time job in Manhattan as a computer programmer – but that ended with the accident; she could no longer rely on public transportation to get to work.

Luda’s emotional survival is rooted in her volunteer work.  Two days a week, she volunteers at a clinic for people with disabilities.  In addition, she serves on the board of an organization dedicated to helping the disabled.  “I don’t go so often to meetings now, because it depends on how I feel,” says Luda, who holds a master’s degree in biology and chemistry.  Instead, she spends more and more time at home and on the computer, reaching out to others with disabilities.  She uses her computer not only to dispense information about everything from housing to medical care for disabled people, but also to promote awareness about their needs. 

The computer and her volunteer work are among her very few recreational outlets.

“Because a lot of places are not wheelchair accessible and I can use only Access-A-Ride [a subsidized service that requires users to reserve a seat in advance], I have a lot of limitations,” she says.

But, for two weeks each August, Luda, thanks to a scholarship from Block and Hexter, can forget her troubles – as well as the despair of the people she helps. At the camp, she can immerse herself in another world, a world where socializing, learning and artistic expression take center stage.  She enjoys the camp’s arts and crafts program, its lectures and strong Jewish atmosphere.  It is the only vacation she takes each year.

For Luda, the camp – and its scholarship – are blessings.   Without Block and Hexter’s financial assistance, Luda would be unable to attend the camp.  Living alone and dependent on a home attendant, she says her limited income stretches only so far and is needed to pay for her daily expenses, including rent, food, some medications and the occasional small repairs that her wheelchair requires.

“Like everyone else, I like going away for two weeks and doing something completely different,” she continues. “We all need a break.”