Outdoors offers escape from pain of parents’ exit

Playing in the backyard in blue print shirts and khakis, Cody and Lee Decker are energetic and carefree as they shoot baskets at their hoop and practice 360-degree spins on their scooters. When they sit still on the couch in their living room, the sadness creeps back into their eyes. They sit quietly and speak abruptly.

Four years ago, the boys’ mother brought them to their great-grandmother Ann Signett, a first-generation Italian immigrant and Holocaust survivor. Their parents were teenagers when they had Lee, now 13, and told Signett that she could raise the boys or they would be placed in foster care.

“Everyone tells me that they couldn’t do what I’m doing,” Signett said. “It’s a sacrifice, but I do it lovingly, willingly.”

Cody and Lee see their mother every Saturday for four hours and attend weekly therapy sessions. Despite the trauma that marked Lee’s early childhood, he excels in school and is enrolled in every honors course available for his seventh-grade Sherman Oaks class.

Lee has created two-hour anime sequences on his computer, complete with a cast of five characters, and set up a makeshift half-pipe with planks and garbage cans at school to practice his skateboard tricks. His dream is to become a professional skateboarder, but he’ll settle for animating movies for Disney as a backup career.

Cody, 10, prefers recess to the classroom. He plays basketball and had a short stint with karate in the hopes of becoming a stuntman. Now he is shooting for a job behind the camera as a film director -- or a lawyer.

“I just want something with really good pay,” Cody admits.

But basketball is his first love, and he faithfully follows the Lakers and the Pistons. Shaquille O’Neal is his favorite player, but Cody laments his bad free-throw shooting.

This summer, Cody and Lee will be among the 12,000 children who will go to camp, thanks to the $2.1 million raised in last year’s fund drive. Donations this season will ensure that just as many deserving children get the camp experience next summer.

Cody and Lee will attend Camp Max Straus for the first time and are looking forward to 12 days in Glendale’s Verdugo Mountains, where they can ride horses and swim in the pool every day.

“The camp experience is a godsend,” Signett said. “They’ll be able to share activities with other kids their age and have fun without having to worry. They will learn from each other and from their peers, things that can’t be taught in school.”

The annual fundraising campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which this year will match the first $1.2 million in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar.

Donations are tax-deductible. For more information, call (213) 237-5771. To make donations by credit card, go to latimes.com/summercamp.

To send checks, use the attached coupon. Do not send cash.

Unless requested otherwise, gifts of $50 or more will be acknowledged in The Times.