The Camp Creating The Inclusive Experience I Never Had

It was June 1969. I was an 11-year-old visually impaired girl leaving home for the first time to attend Jewish overnight camp, the same camp my father had attended years earlier. Boarding that train to Wild Rose, Wisconsin, I was consumed with mixed emotions: already a little homesick and anxious but also excited. I was off to camp with friends from my Jewish day school and my community, as well as new friends I was hoping to meet. At that moment, I was just like them — filled with the same mixed emotions but eager to spend what promised to be three fun-filled weeks at summer camp.

It was a disaster. This was two decades before the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed. The concept of inclusion wasn’t even a thing yet, and the camp had never had a disabled camper before. To be fair, I don’t know if they even knew I had problems with my vision. I didn’t yet identify as a person with a disability, and the camp was not prepared to accommodate one. To my parents’ recollection, the camp had never asked any question in registration that would have elicited a response that I was legally blind and might need support.

Here is an experience that typified my camp experience that summer. Although I did have night blindness, I nonetheless wanted to participate in the night tochnit (activity). It was color war, and the whole camp assembled for activities, including a scavenger hunt throughout the camp. I knew I couldn’t see to get around the camp in the dark. But I didn’t know how or even if I could or should ask for help. I simply told the Rosh Mosh (head of camp) that I wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t participate. Then, to my horror, he sent me back to my cabin alone in the dark! Somehow, I made my way back there and laid down on my bed. I had wanted to be just like everyone else, not different and unable to do what the other campers did joyfully. But there I was — missing out on the fun — lonely, homesick and afraid.

Needless to say, that was my last camp experience. As a result, I could never understand why my siblings — and later my own children — couldn’t wait each year for summer so they could return to that camp. I have friends and family who call summer camp “the happiest place on earth.” I have never been able to relate. For me, it was a place where the staff was untrained and uninformed, a place with no experience or protocols in place to help a child with disabilities. And I was an  11-year-old girl with no voice to ask for help.

Fifty years later (that’s a little hard to say), I have found my voice, and I have embraced my identity as a blind woman. I am a leader in my community, which includes taking a leadership role on the board of Keshet. Through Keshet, I have learned about the organization’s partnership with the JCC’s Camp Chi. Together, these organizations provide an inclusive camp experience for kids and teens with disabilities.

If you had told me 50 years ago that there would be a camp where disabled children were embraced, where belonging and not just being included was the goal, where staff was trained, where support was available and disabled campers could participate in all aspects of camp life, including becoming counselors, I would have told you that was crazy talk. I would have thought it was unrealistic, just some person’s idea of a utopian society.

If you had told me 50 years ago that there would be a camp where disabled children were embraced, I would have told you that was crazy talk.

That 11-year-old girl just wouldn’t have believed it could happen. If it had, I would have understood my siblings’ and children’s sentiment that camp is the happiest place on earth.

Inclusion at Camp Chi is more than just attendance, it’s more than having accessible grounds. It is about full participation, embracing the ideal that an inclusive camp reflects Jewish values while benefitting all campers — disabled and able-bodied alike. It is about offering support to ensure that the camp experience feels like home for all campers, and it is about creating lifelong friendships for all.

In truth, Camp Chi embodies what should be the ideal for all aspects of life, including education, recreation, employment and residential life for people with disabilities. This ideal is not simply about being included. It is about belonging. Through the partnership of Keshet and Camp Chi, and because of the staff training, camper support and dedication to inclusion that Keshet provides to Camp Chi, disabled campers find a summer home where they are not just welcome, they are embraced and truly belong!

Keshet and Camp Chi embody the verse from psalms 133, “hinai ma tov uu’ma na’im shevet achim gam yachad.” “Behold how good and pleasant it is when all people live together as one.” My personal hope would be that all organizations embrace the ideal of inclusion in their communal spaces and experience the benefits of being together.

Michelle Friedman is the vice chair of the board of Keshet in Chicago, a member of ADA 25Advancing Leadership and the Development chair of The Institute for Therapy Through the Arts.