Vision

O’Leary’s Clover Farm is creating a summer camp for children with Diabetes. A place where children can learn to independently manage their diabetes in an environment that is safe and observant of their unique needs.

At O’Leary’s Clover Farm children will participate in normal summer camp activities while interacting with children their own age also living with diabetes. Children will be able to experience the outdoors-hiking, swimming, playing games- Additionally, the camp will offer the chance for a child to experience music and the arts at a level that appeals to them- learn to play the drums or the electric guitar, have the opportunity to learn to paint or sculpt or participate in a dance class.

How O’Leary’s Clover Farm Was Born

O’Leary’s Clover Farm was the idea of Cortney O’Leary Heykoop, the daughter of Daniel S. O’Leary. After the death of her father she struggled for a way to move beyond the bad memories surrounding the last years of his life, years marked by trips to and from the hospital and illustrated by images of the slow decline of a once strong and loving man. While looking through old papers and pictures she came across a clipping from Washington Pennsylvania’s newspaper, The Observer Reporter. The article was written about her father years before, and ran in the Saint Patrick’s Day issue. It was titled “The Luck of the Irish Doesn’t Always Run True” by Byron Smialek.

The article tells the story of a man who at the age of 32 travels from southwestern Pennsylvania to Dallas, Texas in the hopes of learning how to better manage his diabetes. O’Leary says that in Texas he was taught, for the first time in his life, how to be a pancreas, the organ the supplies the body with the insulin needed to break down sugars. This lesson, had it been taught years earlier may have saved his eyesight and kidneys. This lesson could have given Danny O’Leary many more years with his family and friends. Danny died at the age of 45.

This inspiration led to the birth of O’Leary’s Clover Farm. Cortney O’Leary Heykoop wanted to give children the gift of this lesson, to teach children at a young age how to act as a pancreas while still enjoying their childhood.