Clea Newman Carries the Torch for Her Father’s Philanthropic Legacy

Clea Newman remembers her first time volunteering with SeriousFun, the globe-spanning, free camp community for ailing youngsters.

It was simply the one camp again then — in Connecticut — arrange by celebrated actor, activist and American icon Paul Newman in 1988. “My dad said, ‘Why don’t you go up and volunteer as a counselor?’” she recollects to The Hollywood Reporter. “I never really babysat much. I was a little nervous about it. And he said, ‘Just try it.’” At the time, Newman, the youngest of his six youngsters, had an entire profession mapped out in legislation. She giggles interested by it now. “That ended up not being the plan,” she says over Zoom, these signature Newman eyes — piercing blue — twinkling.

Soon after she arrived at camp, she was struck down by poison ivy. “[It was] horrible — all over my legs,” she remembers. But fortunately for Newman, she had befriended three younger boys, across the age of 9, staying on the camp, who took higher care of her than she might ever have imagined: “They took me to the medical center and helped wash my legs, put lotion all over them to take away the itch. They were so concerned about me. It absolutely floored me.”

At SeriousFun, nevertheless, these doting youngsters have been going by way of a dad or mum’s worst nightmare: All three have been battling life-threatening blood diseases. Still, they tended to Newman’s blistered pores and skin. “I drove into camp that first time, a little bit spoiled, in my early 20s. I left a totally changed person,” she says.

Now 61, Newman has by no means left camp — not likely. Since 1988, she’s been a serious advocate for SeriousFun and watched her father increase the Connecticut retreat to 30 camps and applications throughout 5 continents, treating over 2.5 million youngsters with severe diseases worldwide. They provide residential summer time camps, household weekends, hospital outreach applications, bereavement weekends, adaptive winter sports activities, teen golf equipment and younger grownup retreats. Crucially — a tough line the late actor instilled from the get-go — every camp is an unbiased, non-profit group, counting on non-public funding to make sure each youngster and household can participate fully freed from cost.

Newman and the workforce now cater to over 100 varied diseases, together with most cancers, HIV/AIDS and an array of psychological well being points like PTSD and anxiousness. SeriousFun analysis reveals that the experiences have remodeled hundreds of thousands of lives, serving to to numb the trauma, alleviate some ache and, fairly merely, give these youngsters their childhoods again. With the U.Okay. camp now formally up and operating at its everlasting house, Newman gave THR a few of her valuable time — and much more valuable reminiscences of her late father — to coincide with the launch.

She casts her thoughts again to what drove her dad, the Oscar-winning star of The Color of Money, Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, to discovered what would change into one thing of a charity behemoth. “There were a lot of things that were happening at that time in his life, but it really started for two reasons,” she begins.

Her father, who was married to Newman’s mom, Joanne Woodward, from 1958 till his dying in 2008, felt extremely fortunate. “He used to call it ‘Newman’s luck,’” she says. “I mean, he just happened to be at the right place at the right time for everything in his life, or that’s how he felt.” But an in depth childhood pal of theirs grew to become very ailing, and the household would go go to him within the native hospital. “All the children and adults were being treated on the same floor,” Newman explains, “and everyone would come out in the hallway and say hi to him. He met all these beautiful families and parents whose children were being treated there, and they would talk to him about how their child was missing out on their childhood.”

Paul, as a father of six, was devastated to listen to of their anguish. “Kids were basically in and out of hospitals for sometimes years, and they would miss out on everything — from school to making friends, to all those childhood experiences that make you who you are,” says his daughter. She remembers how fondly he spoke of summer time camps; how formative that have was for him, lengthy earlier than he was the Hollywood legend he got here to be. “He said, ‘Well, why can’t I create a camp for children living with serious illness?’ Everybody told him he couldn’t do it, and of course that made him even more focused on doing it.” She is beaming with pleasure as she speaks. “He knew he didn’t know everything, so he surrounded himself with the most knowledgeable people he could find, including the head of pediatric oncology at Yale University Hospital. He found the property, built 52 buildings, recruited the medical care volunteers, and we were serving kids within 18 months.”

There, they have been serving youngsters affected by the 1986 Chornobyl catastrophe in Ukraine. The second camp, in Upstate New York, swiftly adopted. The growth after that got here by way of Paul Newman recognizing totally different wants in numerous areas, and discovering an area champion to accomplice with. Many of the camps — such because the partnership applications with NGOs in India, Africa and the Caribbean — have been based by way of his visiting the nation. “My dad was over in Africa and he asked the gentleman who owned the site, ‘What do you do with this place when it’s not in season?’” says his daughter. “He said, ‘It’s really hard. We have to shut everything down. We have to let everybody go.’ And dad said, ‘Well, you know, I’ve been running these camps. And I was wondering, would you want to serve children here when you’re not having safaris?’ And the guy said, ‘I would love to do that.’”

In reality, SeriousFun was one of many first applications on the earth to serve youngsters with HIV. “Dad stored saying, ‘These children have nobody else,’” says Newman. “It was so heart-wrenching to see. And this is really just at the beginning of the HIV crisis. There was no protocol for how to serve these kids. And some of them would come to camp, and they’d by no means been held.” Newman takes a second to let the emotion in her voice settle.

Over the course of practically 40 years, SeriousFun has scaled as much as change into a Twenty first-century charity, and now serve youngsters with uncommon ailments. They depend on the work of devoted medical professionals and volunteers who work across the clock to verify each youngster will get the camp expertise they deserve: “Every single activity is customized for every child,” continues Newman. “We have arts and crafts. We have [horseback] riding. We have swimming. We have theater. We have camping. And everything is accessible.” Swimming swimming pools are heated to 93 or 94 levels so youngsters with sickle cell illness don’t have a disaster. Zip strains have been tailored to take a baby up in a wheelchair on a ventilator. Not one youngster is to overlook out on any exercise. Newman lauds the willpower of a 30,000-volunteer workforce concerned within the huge operation that’s organizing and operating these camps. Every tense second is price it. “The smiles, the screams of joy. That’s what children should be doing,” she tells THR.

Newman says early conversations along with her father concerning the camp have been a push-and-pull course of. “He and I had just an amazing relationship, and it grew as we both got older. But he was very funny with me because he knew I was stubborn, kind of like him,” she laughs once more. “He knew if he told me things directly, I probably would be like, ‘I know better. I’m going to do it this way.’ So he would just gently say, ‘Maybe you want to try this…’ but after I volunteered the first time,” she concedes, “I was hooked.”

She has taken on varied roles at SeriousFun over time, as a volunteer, workers member and improvement officer. She was on the board of administrators till 2012, earlier than transitioning to her present place as ambassador. The SeriousFun Children’s Network has been a lifelong pursuit for Clea, who was requested by her father to supervise his philanthropic legacy earlier than he handed away. “I kind of always feel like a sloppy second to him,” she confesses. “He really just had this guiding light. But I really feel like, over all these years, I’ve incorporated that guiding light and vision into who I am. And I can’t imagine not being involved. My husband jokes with me all the time. He’s like, ‘Are you ever going to retire?’ And I keep thinking, ‘Why would I do that? It’s part of who I am.’”

She is especially animated when speaking about their newest launch, Over the Wall’s new house at Ockbrook School, close to Derby within the U.Okay. The website is open and able to welcome campers from Friday, although plans are already in movement to boost the amenities by way of 2027. Thankfully, Over the Wall has secured a 40-year lease on the venue, establishing it because the charity’s new headquarters and everlasting house, and it’s protected to say Newman is nothing in need of relieved to lastly have a base in Britain. “There’s so much need,” she says (Newman will later describe the demand as probably the most difficult a part of her job), “and they’ll be able to serve so many more children.”

Paul Newman was particularly eager that the SeriousFun workforce keep updated on among the most urgent well being situations for teenagers, and his daughter says that, because of this, they’ve been branching out into psychological well being diseases because of the post-pandemic rise of social anxiousness, melancholy and PTSD amongst younger youngsters. “Some of our camps are serving that as the primary illness,” she explains. They’ve bought psychological well being and wellness consultants available at devoted camps for these points, and have partnered with psychological well being and suicide prevention group The Jed Foundation to ensure the absolute best care.

Some youngsters have such extreme anxiousness that they received’t depart the home or go to highschool. But SeriousFun analysis reveals that the camps are genuinely life-changing for teenagers and their mother and father. “They were surrounded by other children who were dealing with so many other issues and saw it and felt included and didn’t feel isolated,” she says a couple of current camp program. “Every single one of them went back to school.” Their mother and father informed Newman: “‘Thank you for giving me back my child.’”

What Paul Newman’s SeriousFun has achieved in 38 years is a testomony to the actor’s imaginative and prescient and humanity. They are, evidently, qualities that his daughter has inherited — that a lot is apparent from the tenderness in her voice, the Over the Wall T-shirt she proudly wears on our name — and Clea Newman thinks he’d be fairly proud to see how the charity has developed since his passing.

“We’ve served two and a half million children and their families around the world, and the fact that our programs have expanded into so many different kinds of outreach, I think he would be amazed,” the youthful Newman tells THR. “[But] he had a saying within our family. He’d pat you on the back and be like, ‘Honey, that’s so great! That’s a great start,’” she laughs once more. “So I think he would feel the same way that I do: that there are so many children and families who still need us.”

To discover out extra about SeriousFun and the work they do, head to seriousfun.org.