Cumberland — CUMBERLAND — When Angel goes back to Brooklyn next week, the battle for underworld supremacy will have to be suspended until the summer of 2011.

And that’s too bad. His “summer brother,” Jack, was just getting good at it.

Angel is one of nearly 20 boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 12 from New York who spent anywhere from 10 days to two weeks in the long-running Fresh Air program this summer.

In addition to getting “fresh air” in the mountains of Maryland with his host family, Angel has been playing basketball, riding his bike on the trails and yes, admittedly, playing video games.

“I will have trouble with a game and it’s ridiculous and when Angel gets here, he shows me what to do and it was just so obvious,” said Jack, 9, of Cumberland, who has been Angel’s roommate for two weeks.

 While most of the Fresh Air kids are returning to New York today on a northbound fully chaperoned bus, Angel gets to stay a little longer. Because this is his fifth visit to Cumberland with the same family, he can stay for another week and his host family can escort him to another designated Fresh Air bus stop.

“Cumberland is considered a friendly town in the program,” said Suzanne Wright, the chairwoman of the Cumberland area Fresh Air program and Angel’s “summer mother.”

“And in designated friendly towns, the kids can stay with host families. They usually arrive around the Fourth of July and most kids head home about 10 days later.”

Wright has been participating in the program for seven years. For the past five, she and her husband and Jack and sister Murphy, 14, have been hosting Angel.

“We get to see our world through the eyes of someone else,” said Wright. “We get to see the kids catching fireflies or grilling outside. When Angel first came, he could hardly swim. This year, he learned to do a flip off the diving board.”

The relationships become mutual. Angel — and children like him — are exposed to a country setting while the families get to hear what life is like for someone growing up in a concrete jungle.

“I come back every year to see my friends,” said Angel. “There are things I do here that I can’t do at home. I can’t BMX there. And I don’t see a lot of the animals at home that I have seen here.”

Angel said in one day in Cumberland he saw deer, rabbits and a black bear.

He has been participating in the program since he was 8 years old and did so on the advice of an older sister who is also a Fresh Air kid. Angel also has an older brother, a younger sister and a younger brother. For him, two weeks away in the mountains gives him stories to tell his siblings when he arrives home.

“I liken it to the story of the country mouse and the city mouse,” Wright said. “Over the years, many of our families have hosted the same child for a few years. We have been to Brooklyn to see Angel and his family and last Christmas, one of our families paid for the airfare to fly their Fresh Air kid in for the holidays. It’s sort of like having a close pen pal that you see once a year and get to spend two weeks with.”

Heidi Croyle of Cumberland and her family participated in the program for the first time this year. Their guest, Sharee, even celebrated her seventh birthday her first full day in town.

“At first she didn’t like bugs or dirt or grass. She was bugged because it was so quiet,” said Croyle. “We took her to a playground one day and ended up being the only people there and that made her uncomfortable. It was funny to try to convince her it was OK to get dirty when she played.”

The Fresh Air Fund was founded nationally by a Pennsylvania minister during the Industrial Revolution as a means to expose city children to a healthier environment in rural settings away from smog-producing factories.

“It was part of a very progressive movement at that time,” said Wright. “And this program was developed so children could leave the city and at least for the summer be exposed to fresh air.”

In 1877, The Fresh Air Fund, an independent nonprofit organization, was created to allow children living in disadvantaged communities in New York to experience free summer experiences in country settings.

At one time in Western Maryland, the program was booming. In the late 1970s, more than 40 local families per year sought children to host. In the 1990s, that number dwindled and just five years ago, the Fresh Air program only had three potential host families in the Cumberland area. Today, however, the program is on an upswing.

“We are up to 17 families now. We have people who call ready to host who say when they were kids their parents took in a Fresh Air kid and now that they are adults, they want to host one too,” said Wright.

Applications for potential host families are screened in May and recruitment involves home visitation, a background check, and involvement in group or fundraising activities.

“Getting a Fresh Air kid is like getting a present,” said Wright. “You don’t know what’s inside. There is no guarantee you will have the perfect fit, but if you can commit to taking 10 days out of your life to make a child happy that’s the kind of families we look for.”

“Being a host family makes you look at things we take for granted differently,” said Croyle. “We took Sharee to a farm in Pennsylvania and she took a lot of pictures of cows. And of roads and houses. She took pictures of things we wouldn’t think to take pictures of.

“You just really start to bond with your Fresh Air kid and then they have to go,” said Croyle. “I made up a little book for Sharee and put stamped, addressed envelopes in it so she can write us anytime she wants. We’d love to host her again next year.”

“For some families, they get really attached. A lot of the kids will cry and don’t want to go home and some kids are ready,” said Wright. “But for most, it’s been a great experience and it’s been a life-changing 10 days.”

Contact Shane Riggs at sriggs@times-news.com.