Camp Jabberwocky’s summer sessions begin this Sunday, with campers arriving in Vineyard Haven at 11:30 a.m. for the start of the eight-week season.
The camp’s familiar red school bus, painted with characters from the original Alice in Wonderland illustrations, has already been spotted earlier this month at State Beach in Oak Bluffs during a pre-season weekend for people with disabilities and their families. The getaway provided eight families — about 30 people in all — with the same menu of fun activities that summer campers enjoy, such as beach trips, alpaca yoga, arts and crafts and community events.
“Traditionally, we’ve done two family camps per year at the end of the summer, and we’re still doing those,” said camp director Gabi Cortez, a longtime Jabberwocky volunteer, and family member of two campers. Ms. Cortez now works at the camp year-round.
“This was a new family camp for us,” Ms. Cortez said.
It was also a new experience for executive director Hilary Dreyer, who took over as Camp Jabberwocky’s executive director in February but had never volunteered there until this month.
“I got matched up with a family, went through orientation [and] went through the whole weekend,” Ms. Dreyer told the Gazette Monday, as she and Ms. Cortez sat on the deep, shady porch that spans the camp’s main building.
“It was so fun. It was a really spectacular experience,” Ms. Dreyer said. “We went to First Friday. That was an absolute blast.”
Camp Jabberwocky was established in 1953 by Helen (Hellcat) Lamb, who originally called it the Martha’s Vineyard Cerebral Palsy Camp. It has been an integral part of the Vineyard community ever since, welcoming people with special needs every summer except for 2020, when the pandemic forced it to close.
While summer sessions focus exclusively on the campers, who have cerebral palsy, autism or other disabilities, the family camps are just as much for parents and siblings, Ms. Cortez said.
“We want the siblings of campers to also feel held and supported,” she said.
The families get a chance to get to know each other, share communal meals and often make lasting friendships, Ms. Cortez said.
Camp Jabberwocky’s volunteer counselors for the regular summer season were due to arrive Thursday. Over the next eight weeks, the camp will see more than 160 volunteers and 127 campers, Ms. Dreyer said. Another 25 families, plus volunteers, will take part in the autumn camps, she said.
The first of many cherished Jabberwocky traditions begins Sunday, when volunteers greet campers with a two-stage welcome. Some counselors will join them for the 10:45 a.m. trip from Woods Hole, while others don eye-catching outfits and sing songs at the Vineyard Haven terminal to welcome campers to the Island.
The Steamship Authority works with Camp Jabberwocky to accommodate the voyaging campers, assisting with luggage and providing gathering spaces for the group. The boat line also provides Camp Jabberwocky with tickets in exchange for sponsorship, Ms. Dreyer said.
“The Steamship are incredible partners,” she said.
A small parade of wheelchairs and costumed counselors will then lead from the Vineyard Haven terminal to the camp on Greenwood avenue, while other campers ride in the Jabberwocky bus.
The bus returns for the Edgartown Fourth of July parade, with a full complement of wildly costumed campers and volunteers. Camp Jabberwocky has been a mainstay of the parade for decades, drawing rapturous cheers from the crowds along the route and often winning prizes for its fanciful floats.
But the Jabberwocky summer musicals, which before Covid drew overflow audiences to the camp’s studio building, are not returning this year.
“We haven’t quite gotten into welcoming tons of public into the space. We’re still working with a vulnerable population,” Ms. Dreyer said.
Instead of mounting public musicals, campers will continue gathering for regular talent nights at the studio building, Frabjous (all the cabins are named from Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky).
Islanders and visitors will still find Jabberwocky campers at State Beach, where they take part in evening drum circles as well as daytime beach trips, and at other public places around the Vineyard this summer.
Camp Jabberwocky was run entirely by volunteers until 2011, when volunteer Liza Gallagher became its first paid employee. The camp now has a year-round staff of three: Ms. Dreyer, Ms. Cortez and longtime Jabberwocky stalwart Jack Knower, who maintains the buildings and grounds.
All of the camp’s other needs, including meals, on-site medical care, housekeeping and classes, are provided by unpaid volunteers — many of whom return year after year and even generation after generation.
“Once you just feel it in your bones, the love for these people and this place, it becomes your family,” Ms. Cortez said.
“So many of our volunteers work so hard to get here... because it’s family. It’s coming back to home.”
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