An experience like any other

Camp ASCCA gives children, adults with disabilities normal outdoors opportunity

By Staff Writer, oanow.com
Published: July 25, 2011

Laughter, smiles, screams of exhilaration. These are common sights and sounds one might expect from children at summer camps. But those scenes are not always the case for children with disabilities — that is, unless one is visiting Alabama’s Special Camp for Children and Adults, known as Camp ASCCA, near Jacksons’ Gap.

According to its website, Camp ASCCA has been providing camping experiences for children and adults with disabilities since 1976. Open year-round, the camp is situated on 230 wooded acres on Lake Martin and serves an average of 7,000 people annually.

At Camp ASSCA, there are no answers of “No, you cannot do this,” no stares of being different, only words of encouragement and high fives while building courage and confidence to return to the real world.

Shanae Heard, 22, of Auburn gets to experience those same emotions as she rides her “adaptive roll-a-coasters,” the ziplines and tubing on the lake. “Here, my disability does not matter,” says Heard, who has been coming to Camp for “Teen Week” the last 12 years. The Southern Union State Community College student plans on someday becoming a psychologist.

Zack Woolley of Birmingham, who has been coming to the camp for the past 14 years, agrees.

“Here at Camp ASCCA, we get to be ourselves without fear of the stares,” Woolley says. “Here, we are ourselves, at camp we are normal, thanks to the staff for making us see beyond our limitations. A place like this is relief.”

Daily activities at Camp ASCCA include ones commonly seen at regular summer camps: skits, canoeing, swimming, basketball and the all-important cabin wars. These activities allow campers to feel normal — so normal that the week of camp concludes with a prom, an event looked forward to by both campers and staff.

All week, campers ask for “dates” to the prom. No one is exempt. Counselors, camp workers and even the nursing staff receive invitations from the campers to be dates. Some campers have will have 10 or more. Some will ask by way of the “Love Notes” at mealtime, making known to all who they are asking to the prom. But come prom night, everyone is dancing with everyone.

“Here I am looked at as a person, not as an object. Here I get to escape the day-to-day reality of the stares and be myself,” Heard says.

Photograph by Cliff Williams, Opelika-Auburn News – Camper Jercolbie Bradford of Birmingham reacts after being named camper of the week for ‘Teen Week’ at Camp ASCCA Thursday, July 21, in Jackosn’s Gap, Ala.