Future looking up for Camp CaPella Panel outlines strategy to reopen in 2008

DEDHAM – Camp CaPella, a lakefront summer sanctuary for children with disabilities in Greater Bangor, will be closed for the second consecutive year due to a funding shortage.

The news isn’t all bad, though.

United Cerebral Palsy of Northeast Maine, which has operated the camp for more than 40 years, recently formed a committee to outline a strategy that would reopen the camp by 2008.

“We’ve got a great facility and lord knows we have a community that supports this, but it takes time. Right now, we’re just a committee,” Jeffrey Fitch, a Bangor accountant who will serve on the new seven-member board, said Monday.

The committee, which will meet for the first time this week, has a larger goal of keeping Camp CaPella running for years to come.

For more than 40 years, the camp on Phillips Lake in Dedham has hosted between 70 and 80 children with various disabilities from all over eastern Maine. For many, it was the only place where they truly felt comfortable, according to UCP Executive Director Bobbi-Jo Yaeger.

“These kids counted on the camp,” she said Monday.

But Camp CaPella requires about $100,000 each year to operate and, for the last several years before its closure, UCP had been funding it with surplus money.

“People always thought that there was never a funding issue with Camp CaPella, but I’ve been involved with UCP for 14 years and the camp always had a deficit,” Yaeger said.

Since the camp is only a small part of UCP, which oversees 16 programs with an annual budget of about $6 million, the decision came last year to close the camp indefinitely.

“Eventually, as money became tighter and tighter for our other services, it became harder and harder until we had to make a decision,” Yaeger said. “But it didn’t come lightly.”

While the news hit hard for many, it also elicited a generous outpouring of support from the community.

Katie Guernsey of Bangor was one of a group of parents who spearheaded an ambitious fundraising campaign.

“People literally jumped out of the woodwork to help raise money,” said Guernsey, whose 4-year-old daughter, Abby, suffers from a rare neurological disorder known as Rett syndrome and participates in some of the services offered by UCP. “Since then my heart has really jumped into Camp CaPella.”

Starting last August, Guernsey and others raised $60,000 through a variety of fundraising events. Even though the figure was well short of their goal, it opened some eyes.

Out of that community support, the board of directors at UCP decided to create a separate committee for Camp CaPella.

“We felt it was not getting the attention it needed as we tried to keep our other programs up and running,” Yaeger said. “But there are a lot of dedicated people who really want this to happen.”

The new committee will meet for the first time on Thursday. The first order of business will be to start the search for a full-time camp director.

“For the time being, [the committee] will be affiliated with UCP. We want to give it every chance of succeeding,” Yaeger said.

Eventually, though, Camp CaPella could branch off from UCP.

“It’s everybody’s view that the camp will end up being its own nonprofit,” Fitch said. “UCP has effectively spawned off other functions many times.”

Guernsey’s work on the fundraising effort landed her a spot on the new committee, although she said she’d be involved with Camp CaPella either way.

“I couldn’t separate from it anyway. I feel like I’m married to it,” she said.

Besides, Guernsey has personal reasons. Her daughter, Abby, will turn 5 years old next year, which just happens to be the minimum age for a child to attend the camp.

“My personal goal is to get it open by the time my daughter is old enough to attend,” she said.