National E-Board Meetings

Google Map Address: 

Po Box 52 Farmington, MO 63640
Event Description

Event Date: 

Jul 19, 2014

Event Sponsered by: 

  • National
Venue Information
Camp Hope
Po Box 52, MO 63640

Farmington Missouri, 63640
(910) 599-0640, (573) 701-0899

Cut-off Date: 

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Camp Hope and its mission of honoring the fallen by healing the wounded was born out of tragedy for the White family. Their son, Pfc. Christopher Neal White, died June 20, 2006, while serving with the U.S. Marines in al-Anbar Province in Iraq. An improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated under the vehicle in which Chris was travelling.

Will “Mike” White and his wife, Galia, stand with a portrait of their son, Christopher Neal White, who was killed by a roadside bomb while serving with the U.S. Marines in Iraq in 2006. To honor their son’s memory, the couple started Camp Hope. “

Chris always wanted to be a Marine, ever since junior high,” says Will, who himself served 12 years active duty in the U.S. Army and now works as a civil service equipment specialist for the Army at Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Ill. “He waited until he was 22 and then joined up. He got killed at 23, just a couple months before coming home from his first tour.”

Like his father, Chris was an avid outdoorsman who loved to hunt and fish. While hunting deer near Lewistown in northern Missouri in the fall of 2006 — the first hunting season without Chris — Will’s vision for Camp Hope began to emerge.

“What can you say? Your mind does a lot of things while you’re sitting out there in the deer stand,” Will says. “I decided then that I wanted to help the guys that are coming back with one arm or one leg or a brain injury.”

A Missouri native who grew up near De Soto, Will began searching for real estate. Within a few months, he found a 170-acre farm just a short drive outside Farmington that fit the bill, and the Chris Neal Farm was established. Will took possession of the farm about a year after Chris died, and with the help of friends and family, the farm and the small modular home on it were readied to accommodate injured veterans. The first hunt took place in the fall of 2007 as Camp Hope welcomed soldiers for deer season. A total of six hunts have now been held at the camp — three deer hunts and three turkey hunts — and about 50 soldiers from 12 states have visited.

“We just let the guys have a good time,” explains Will, who was named the 2010 Humanitarian of the Year by the AMVETS Ladies Auxiliary. “We treat them like people, not patients. I think we give them more of a family environment.”