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For more than 50 years, a summer camp in central Louisiana has served special needs children, and a local beauty pageant continues to do its part to help send those children to “their summer place” for one week.
The Schriever Lions Club Beauty Pageant will take place Saturday at the Evergreen Cajun Center at 4694 W. Main St. in Houma, and all proceeds will go toward sending special needs children to the Louisiana Lions Camp in Leesville.
Non-special needs girls up to the age of 13 may sign up, as well as “Golden Girls” over the age of 40. The entry fee is $55, and it includes photogenic, an optional category which usually costs $5 to $10 in addition to the entry fee at most pageants. Other categories are fashion, hair, smile, model and personality. Those who can’t afford to sign up can sell raffle tickets as their payment, and all paying participants are automatically entered into a raffle for an iPad.
Girls and women with special needs are also encouraged to participate in the beauty pageant, and they can sign up free of charge. Those with special needs are only judged on personality.
“I love the 3 year olds and the 4 year olds and the (early teens) that are looking pretty, but my special needs group, it’s a day that I highlight them and their parents,” said event organizer Denise Callais, who has been putting on the fundraiser pageant for nine years.
Callais said the participants can wear “Sunday best,” as opposed to the full beauty pageant ensemble.
“You can put anything in the closet on as long as it’s not blue jeans,” Callais said. “Some of them come in, in evening gowns. Some of them come in, in a pants suit. Some of them come in, in a dress. Whatever they have available is good. I don’t want people to have to go out and spend all kinds of money. I’d rather them come and do it for the cause.”
There is a $5 admission fee for adults and $2 for children 10 and under, and other attractions include concessions and several raffles including ones for $200 cash, $100 cash, $75 cash, 50/50, an LSU garbage can and a $25 gift card.
Those interested may call Callais by tomorrow at (985) 291-2854 or sign up at the door on Saturday. The early session begins at 10 a.m., and the late one begins at 12:30 p.m. With each pageant category costing about $100, according to Callais, donations of any amount to put on the event are being accepted.
Proceeds from this event sent about 40 special needs children to camp last year, according to Callais. The camp is close to her heart as her older brother, Dean Navarre, was born without arms and was one of the first kids to attend the camp in 1958 when he was eight years old. He went back every year until he was 15 and now helps support it as the president of the Schriever Lions Club and Camper Alumni Association and serves on the board of directors of the Louisiana Lions League for Crippled Children.
With the pageant only being one of the Schriever Lions Club’s fundraisers, Navarre said it sends between 80 and 86 children to camp statewide annually while also sending monthly payments to the camp.
“Until the day I die, the good lord take me or I can’t do it anymore, I’m going to keep supporting it,” said Navarre.
The camp is handicapped accessible in every possible way, including a ramp to allow children in wheel chairs to use a swimming pool and special swing adaptations that allow children to swing in a wheel chair.
Children are also able to shoot an arrow with a bow, shoot a BB gun and fish in Vernon Lake.
“Everything there is rigged up for the handicapped,” Navarre explained. “There’s not a place you can go in the whole property in all them buildings where everything is not handicapped accessible.”
Celeste Naquin, a 39-year-old with Cerebral Palsy from Chackbay, won the beauty pageant crown about three years ago and has the record for attending the camp more than anyone else because she lied about her age and attended it until she was 25. Naquin still goes back one weekend in June every year and makes snowballs for the current campers.
“I like to do the pageant because I’m helping the Lion’s Camp in Leesville,” said Naquin, a Schriever Lions Club and Camper Alumni member who looks forward to participating in Saturday’s pageant. “I enjoyed the camp tremendously. I like the swimming and the little prom night, archery, just meeting more friends that are in my situation. The councilors are awesome. They really show a lot of attention and dedication to the campers.”
Naquin’s mother, Cindy Naquin, even said that Celeste had her grandmother, Beverly Guidry, donate a quilt to be raffled off as a camp fundraiser, to raise more money for the camp that means so much to her.
In order to spread word of the camp, the Schriever Lions Club will hold its annual Town Meeting March 18 to inform the public of the camp.
“There’s a lot of people that don’t know the camp exists,” Navarre said. “I don’t do casinos, but I know where they have one at. I don’t do bar rooms, but I know where they got them. So the thing is I want people to know that we have a camp for these special children.”
The Town Meeting will be from 6 to 8 p.m., and Callais and her husband Reed will cook and serve those in attendance free of charge.
Celeste Naquin of Chackbay, a 39-year-old with Cerebral Palsy won the beauty pageant in the special needs category about three years ago and has attended the Louisiana Lions Camp more years than anyone in its history.
