TEANECK - When Ruth Gottscho died from kidney disease in 1960 at age 15, her parents were determined to help others suffering from the same disorder. In that same year, Eva and Ira Gottscho established the Ruth Gottscho Kidney Foundation.

Dialysis, which would have saved Ruth’s life, was then in the experimental stage, said Ruth’s sister, Judy Gottscho Eichinger, a 32-year Teaneck resident. But even when dialysis became available a few years later, it was expensive and, until Medicare began funding it in the 1972, not obtainable to every patient who needed it to stay alive.

One of the foundation’s first programs was to buy more than a 100 dialysis machines and to loan them to patients and train their families in home dialysis. When a patient no longer needed the machine - either because he or she had died or had received a transplant - it was returned and loaned to another family.

After Medicare began funding dialysis, the foundation turned to other services, including subsidizing medication and transportation for patients who could not afford these costs, which are not covered by Medicare. But the foundation’s major focus has been to help children with kidney disease experience summer camping.

"My sister always dreamed of going to camp but because of her illness, she could not," said Gottscho Eichinger, chairperson of the Foundation. "She was very jealous when her friends and I went to camp."

Summer camp was important to her family, Gottscho Eichinger said. Her parents originally met as counselors at a camp.

Beginning in 1972 Eva Gottscho began seeking a camp that would mainstream children with kidney disease into the regular camp program. (Ira Gottscho died in 1971.)

"There were a number of programs that were devoted to particular illnesses, but a camp where children with kidney disease would share the same activities as regular campers was unheard of," Gottscho Eichinger said.

When no camp in New Jersey was willing to start such a program, Gottscho approached Frost Valley YMCA Camp in the Catskill Mountains.

"They were eager to do it. They have always reached out and done new things in camping," Eichinger said.

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