The sounds of Camp Jabberwocky weave across generations 

Enchanting folk songs echoed through the wooden walls of Camp Jabberwocky’s music cabin one Sunday morning in August as violin and cello strings met with a bow. Around the room, campers looked to the stage and took in the rhythm and the notes, while others clapped along to the beat. By the final song, campers and counselors also joined in with instruments of their own. 

The scene was in tune with an enduring element of the oldest running camp for people with disabilities on Martha’s Vineyard: music. Drumming on the beach on warm, summer nights with local musician Rick Bausman, concerts in the wooden hall at the camp itself in Vineyard Haven, and casual music between campers and counselors at night are all frequent occurrences at Camp Jabberwocky, ringing out in its history and in the memories of the people the camp has served.

Every summer, Camp Jabberwocky opens its doors on Greenwood Avenue  to more than 150 campers of all ages from across the country, primarily New England, where they reside for a period between one and four weeks.

Joe Kovac and Shannon Mustard of Atlantic Harmony String Duo were at center stage that Sunday in mid-August, where they played a blend of classical and Scottish folk music for campers. It was a preview of the concert they performed later that night on August 16 at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center to raise money for Camp Jabberwocky. In total, the show brought about 100 people and raised $1,125.

The camp’s season recently concluded on August 23 with Family Camp, when the campers and their families came together for the weekend.

Kovac, who plays the cello, is no stranger to Camp Jabberwocky. His history with the camp is ancestral. Kovac is the great grandson of Helen “Hellcat” Lamb, who founded the camp in 1953 with an idea that was radical for its time: People with disabilities deserved a summer filled not with limitations but with adventure, friendship, and the opportunity to experience a Vineyard summer. More than seven decades later, Kovac and his wife are carrying on Helen’s legacy. 

“My association with Martha’s Vineyard has always been with Camp Jabberwocky, and it’s been such an important thing in our family. The camp is just so well-loved,” Kovac said. “We came up with the idea of coming back and doing a fundraising concert … We wanted to do something with our talent that would pay back to the legacy of the camp.” 

Camp Jabberwocky was founded at a time when people with disabilities were hidden from mainstream society due to social stigma, according to John Lamb, the son of founder Helen and a longtime director of the camp who remains a trustee in his retirement. His daughter, Caitlin Lamb, is the current co-director. John explained that people with disabilities were often subject to deeply rooted shame as someone who “looked or acted differently.” Camp Jabberwocky was founded just two years after Camp Jened, a summer camp in the Catskills Mountains for disabled children, teenagers, and adults. Many campers and counselors from Camp Jened became activists in the disability rights and independent living movements, memorialized in the 2020 documentary, “Crip Camp.”

Camp Jabberwocky, recognized as one of the oldest sleepaway camps for people with disabilities in the country, was created with the intent to provide people with disabilities with a world set at their own pace.

“It’s just a magical place to be. It’s been a wonderful getaway for someone that needs to get away from all the bustle of everyday life,” Gage from New York, who has been a camper at Camp Jabberwocky for the past 15 years, told The Times. Gage asked that his last name not be used, per camp policy. 

John recalled the moment his mother decided to open Camp Jabberwocky after a short trip to the Vineyard with her three children in the early 1950s. She was a speech pathologist at the Fall River Cerebral Palsy Training Center at the time, and her Island vacation made her realize that the children she worked with didn’t have the prospect of a similar trip. 

“She decided that she would start a camp but had great difficulty getting it going because the medical establishment was not in favor of putting these children at risk. But the parents, of course, loved the idea of getting some … vacation in the summertime. So she started with a young junior in high school, a girl named Ursula, who was an aide at the clinic,” John said. 

Caitlin told The Times that her grandmother’s determination is what made Camp Jabberwocky a possibility, despite the difficulties she faced along the way. “[Helen] was always very, very confident in how she felt and what she thought should happen.
So that made her extremely bullheaded in whatever she wanted to do.” 

By July 1953, Helen and Ursula Dittaim, the first Jabberwocky counselor, brought the first group of campers to Martha’s Vineyard, where they stayed in a gingerbread house called “Happy Days” in the Oak Bluffs campground. The town was walking distance away, and campers enjoyed the beach, Ocean Park, and rides at the Flying Horses Carousel. 

After a successful first summer, Helen decided to expand. She put an advertisement in the Vineyard Gazette asking if anyone had a larger space available. An Islander named Peter Penney, the head of the 4-H program at the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society at the time, said he wasn’t using a clubhouse for his program and offered it to Lamb. “We eventually built a few cottages and got up to about 30 campers per week,” John said. 

In 1965, Camp Jabberwocky was awarded the parcel of land where their campus is now, at 200 Greenwood Ave. in Vineyard Haven, which includes a sweeping array of cabins, interspersed greenery and trees, and central buildings. John said the current campus was the result of Islanders showing up for each other.

“The Islanders, as usual, came to our rescue and built cabins — the main cabin, the kitchen, and everything else — in one winter with all the plumbing. It was incredible,” he said. 

Over time, what started out as a camp for children with disabilities became a getaway for people of all ages. As campers grew up, they weren’t denied entry, and the result is an intergenerational place for connection.

“Those kids that grew up at camp are almost my age now. I mean, some people have been coming to camp for almost as long as it has been in session,” John said. Lamb is 81. 

Hilary Dreyer, co-director of Camp Jabberwocky for the past three years, said there is one night that occurs every session and sums up what the camp is all about. It’s called “Studio Night” and is a talent show for campgoers that features music, dance, and impersonations.

“We had a lightsaber battle, a Whitney Houston impersonator, an Elvis impersonator, lots of karaoke and dancing, and even some full-blown skits were activated by campers and volunteers, with the final act ending with whipped cream pies to the face,” Dreyer recalled. 

Along with events like “Studio Night,” Heather, a longtime local Jabberwocky camper, told The Times that the daily activities are what make the camp so special.

“I like to do art a lot, and I do some other things … I like to play basketball. I like to play music here. And I like to hang out with [my friends] because it’s special,” she said. Heather’s last name was also not used, per camp policy. 

Tuition for campers and their families is free, and counselors volunteer their time. Caitlin explained that Camp Jabberwocky relies constantly on the community to continue its mission as a nonprofit. Funds are raised through public donations, grants, and community fundraisers, including annual traditions, like the 5K and Fun Run hosted at the Farm Institute on August 15, and new initiatives, such as the benefit concert.

“The ability for the camp to keep going is because new people find out about it and decide that it’s important … So it’s really quite incredible that we can have the number of staff we do, which is over 100,” she said. 

Since its first summer in operation, Camp Jabberwocky has brought people of all ages, backgrounds, mental and physical disabilities together, with a mission of creating a wonderland where limits fade, and every camper is empowered to thrive. 

“It’s an egalitarian society that works so beautifully, and everyone talks about it being a magical place, and it is,” John said. “It is magical because everyone is equal to everybody else, no matter what their level of [cognitive] or of physical abilities.”