Mission & History
Where Childhood is Protected.
Special Love® has been protecting childhood and supporting families affected by pediatric cancer since 1983. What began with one family's grief and one phone call has grown into a lifelong community serving hundreds of children, teens, young adults, and families each year.
Our Mission
Special Love® provides a community of support to children with cancer and their families.
Our Core Values
In every program, every interaction and every moment, our core values guide Special Love in what matters most to support children with cancer and the people who love them.
Childhood First
We protect the dignity, wonder, and joy of childhood above all else. Every decision is filtered through the question: does this allow a child to simply be a child.
Family as the Unit of Care
Cancer affects more than the child alone. Special Love® supports children, siblings, parents, and caregivers together, honoring the family as the foundation of care and connection.
Joy with Intention
We create spaces where illness steps aside and childhood steps forward. Through carefully crafted experiences, kids are free to laugh, explore, and remember what it feels like to simply be a kid.
Trust Earned Through Care
Freedom, joy, and independence are possible because families trust us. That trust is earned through consistency, preparedness, and integrity in everything we do.
Community for the Long Journey
We build relationships that last beyond a single program or moment. Special Love® is a lifelong community, not a one-time experience.
Our Story
Special Love® was born from loss, and from love.
In 1976, Tom and Sheila Baker lost their daughter Julie to lymphoma following treatment at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Maryland. During that difficult year, they met other families with children facing cancer and found community in their shared experiences of fear, love and grief. After Julie's death, the Bakers began searching for a way to help those families find something illness had tried to take away: joy.
In the summer of 1982, a chance discovery of an old magazine article about a camp for children with cancer in upstate New York set something in motion. Tom Baker later described reading it as, “as close as I've ever felt to a divine calling.” The Bakers visited the camp, then reached out to find a local facility that might make something similar possible in their own community. That search led them to the Northern Virginia 4-H Educational Center in Front Royal, Virginia, and to a conversation that would change thousands of lives.
With support from local Rotary clubs, area donors, and the medical team at NCI (including Dr. Phil Pizzo, the oncologist who had cared for Julie) Camp Fantastic welcomed its first 29 campers in August 1983. Children ages 7 to 17 who were current cancer patients or within three years of treatment spent a week swimming, canoeing, hiking, and simply being kids. Special Love, Inc. was incorporated on January 1, 1983, as the nonprofit organization behind that first camp.
In the four decades since, Special Love has grown far beyond a single week at camp. Today, the organization serves children and families from birth through age 30, offering programs that support patients, siblings, parents, and the whole family, from Camp Fantastic and BRASS Camp to family retreats, hospital outreach, young adult programs, peer support, financial relief, and scholarships. Camp Fantastic remains a recognized program within the National Cancer Institute and has made Special Love a designated National Institutes of Health (NIH) charity, drawing families from the Washington metropolitan area and across the country.
Throughout this evolution, the heart of the organization remains: an enduring commitment to make sure no family navigates the journey of childhood cancer alone.