On Friday and Saturday night at Camp Jabberwocky, Dr. Frankenstein hailed from Pennsylvania rather than Transylvania, and his use of electricity didn’t sit well with the Amish villagers. Welcome to Frankenstein’s Last Dance.
Here they come. Three vans full. I’m hot. I’m exhausted. And I’m nervous. Camp Jabberwocky shows up in my meadow every year for a lively session of the Chilmark Writing Workshop.
Camp Jabberwocky has been around for more than 60 years now and summer wouldn’t be summer without its productions. Join staff and campers Friday, July 18 and Saturday, July 19 for Something Frankenstein.
In 1953 a few children from Fall River, some in wheelchairs and some wearing braces, clambered off the ferry and found freedom for the first time on the Vineyard. Sixty years later, Camp Jabberwocky is still changing lives.
Officially known as the Martha’s Vineyard Cerebral Palsy Camp, this extraordinary program gives adults and children with severe disabilities a few weeks each year to experience all the joys of summer — swimming, dancing, fishing, parasailing, painting, horseback riding, to name a few.
Just one visit to Camp Jabberwocky seals the deal — you will want whatever it is the camp propagates. It will take some sacrifice and a little blood, sweat and tears but the unstoppable spirit that lives among the Tumtum trees in the woods surrounding the cabins is infectious.
It was 60 years ago that Helen Lamb first brought six children with disabilities to a leaky cottage in Oak Bluffs. The rest is not just history, but her beloved legacy: Camp Jabberwocky, a residential vacation camp for people with disabilities.
Camp Jabberwocky, a summer camp for children and adults with disabilities, is enthusiastically looking forward to celebrating its 60th anniversary this summer. The celebration will also give fellow campers and me the opportunity to thank the residents of Martha’s Vineyard for helping make camp possible. For the past six decades, your generous support has succeeded in allowing the camp to grow and flourish.
TORONTO, ONTARIO - It all began in the summer of 1993 when Sean Costello, a short man with red hair and Down syndrome, wandered onto a playing field with a microphone and a cameraman and, for the purposes of a video class, began asking his fellow campers a single question - "How's your sports?" - right in the middle of a game of kickball.
The first time I saw Camp Jabberwocky to know what it was, it looked just like what you will see sometime after five o'clock this afternoon, probably about halfway through the parade - the dark red bus growling and coughing its way around a distant corner in Edgartown; in front of it, leading the way, the lanky kids with long hair and painted faces skipping, dancing, blowing whistles, banging drums and pushing other kids in wheelchairs. It was probably around 1968 or 1969 when the idea of what Jabberwocky first began to register with me.
Looking Glass: Jabberwocky Is Heading South with New Camp
By PAUL REMY Special to the Vineyard Gazette
Jowharah Johnson enjoys dancing and having fun. Her parents
frequently take her out. But the 19-year-old African American teenager,
who has Cerebral Palsy, does not have friends to hang out with.
