Seeing my life, the world change at camp

   Years ago, long before I began this blog, I wrote a piece that I entitled “Growing Up and Out at Camp,” about going to Camp Joan Meier on the coast above Malibu and other summer camps for disabled kids.  I opened by describing a camp dance at Joan Meier, at which the arts and crafts director, a young woman named Chris who I had my eye on (this was before I had any inkling of sexuality), stood me up from my chair and held me up as we gyrated and sweated through the song, which turned out to be the long version of the Doors’ “Light My Fire.”

   I wrote about how Chris and the other hippie-ish, young people who worked at the camp, who were paid a pittance and had to love the exhausting work that they were doing, let me, away from my protective parents for two weeks each summer, have fun, try new things (sing at the talent show...). I wrote about how they let me explore, about how going home was always so sad (I’d mope, if not cry, for days afterwards), about how I strongly feel that I began to be who I became, who I am today, at camp.

   All this came back to me, came gushing back to me in wave after wave, as I watched Crip Camp, a documentary that recently premiered on Netflix, following right along in the door-busting steps of Special and 37 Seconds which also premiered on Netflix and which I have written about in earlier posts.  The documentary is about Camp Jened, a summer camp for disabled kids in the Catskill mountains from the 1940’s and 1970’s. One of the film’s directors attended the camp when he was growing up and got hold of a remarkable treasure trove of black-and-white footage from that time and also interviewed a number of former campers and staff members.  Seeing the footage from the camp and hearing about all the adventures and all the freedom that the campers felt (not only were there no stares, there was no disability hierarchy – with those with polio at the top, because they look and talk “more normal” and those with Cerebral Palsy are at the bottom) is incredible enough.  This alone is quite satisfying and sweet, enough for a film. 

   Even more extraordinary is how the film traces how some of the campers, like Judy Heuman, went on to be leaders in the disability rights movement, with a number ending up in Berkeley, the hotbed of activism.  The film makes the point that they were inspired by their time at camp, where they were free.  The staff had a big part in this.  I don’t know if they intended to groom future rights activists; they probably just wanted disabled kids to be able to be kids.  However, Camp Director Larry Allison, who doesn’t look at all like what one would imagine, does say, “The disabled aren’t the ones with a problem.  The non-disabled are the ones with a problem.” – an astonishing notion at the time, one that would be a major principle years later in disability culture and studies. 

   I do wish the first two-thirds instead of just the first third of the nearly two-hour film was comprised of the camp footage – I just loved seeing it and the memories it brought back, and I already knew the movement history – but it is a most compelling, comprehensive and educational history.  The end shows a few campers returning to the site of the camp, as well as pictures and footage and life-span dates of campers who have died, with Neil Young’s “Sugar Mountain” (part of an excellent, evocative soundtrack) in the background.  This may be the most breath-taking, poignant sequence.

   Camp Jened appears to have been somewhat or much less structured, with the campers left to decide how to spend their time and even to prepare a meal when the cook is off, than the camps I attended. Also, I wasn’t involved in the disabled rights movement, but I did very much make my presence known and forged my path forward here in Claremont.  And I have a close long-time connection to Berkeley through family and friends (also, my dad went to Cal and started telling me about the “rolling quads,” the first disabled students there, when I was a child, giving me something to strive for, even if I ended up at U.C Riverside instead).       

   Two scenes stand out for me.  One is a former camper saying that one of his favorite memories of camp was of a girl he like putting her hand “on my cock.” The other is a scene at camp, where a group is having a discussion around a table.  One girl speaks, her speech extremely garbled, all but impossible to understand (there aren’t even the subtitles that are provided in other cases, leaving us all feeling bewildered, lost, stupid).  A counselor asks if anyone has understood her, and a boy with impaired but less impaired speech, interprets. I found this tiny moment of mutual compassion and assistance, of the disabled helping the disabled, to be tremendously, surprisingly moving.

   But, to be honest, what I love more than everything else that I love about this documentary is not only seeing but hearing folks like me, with severe Cerebral Palsy, with speech that is difficult to understand, presented to a wide audience. This is a door opening to being acknowledged, accepted, understood. As is evidenced with going to camp, nothing else is more liberating and empowering.