Brandon Towle ’19 is the founder of New England’s first sleepaway camp for stuttering youth
Brandon Towle ’19 rarely passes up an opportunity to talk, even if speech itself hasn’t always been ea sfor him.
We first met in 2018 when he was in his last year at HCC. A business major, he introduced himself in an email. His purpose: to share news that he had started a nonprofit with the help of some of his HCC professors.
“I am a lifelong stutterer who has always been challenged by fluent speech,” he wrote. “My mission is to help others that stutter just like myself. I would be very grateful if you would provide me with the opportunity to talk to you about my plans.”
As a teenager, Towle had attended a summer sleepaway camp for stuttering youth in the Midwest. The camp combined speech therapy with the same kinds of recreational activities found at a typical summer camp. The experience had made a profound impact on Towle’s speech and life.
Growing up in Westfield, Mass., he knew no such camp then existed in New England (few in fact in the entire country). He hoped that his, Camp Words Unspoken, would be the first.
“As stutterers, our words often go unspoken,” he told me. “We want to say something, but we just can’t, or we change the wording from what we really want to say or express. There were times when I wanted to say something, and I just couldn’t do it.”
By the time we got together, Towle and Camp Words Unspoken had already been written up in the Springfield Republican and the Westfield News. As the camp’s founder, president, and, essentially, its only “employee,” the responsibilities of marketing fell to him, and it’s hard to imagine a better pitchman for the cause.
Although Camp Words Unspoken existed only on paper, Towle, then 22, had already set up a website. He had a logo, branded gear, and a board of directors. He was actively fundraising and working to secure a camp site, hire staff, and enlist speech and language pathologists throughout New England to help him spread the word. He was doing all this while working full time as a sales merchandiser for Coca-Cola in Connecticut and taking classes to complete his associate degree at HCC.
Camp Words Unspoken was initially scheduled to open in Goshen, Mass., in August 2019. I wrote a short item about Towle and the camp for the Spring 2019 issue of The Connection. Soon after, though, Towle told me the opening would be delayed a year. He needed more time to firm up the financing and business plan.
Then, in March 2020, as we all remember, the world stalled. COVID-19 put Camp Words Unspoken on indefinite hold. Towle had doubts about whether it would ever open:
“I asked myself, is this really what I want to do? When you’re starting a business, sometimes it works out and sometimes it fails. It was a dream, and sometimes dreams don’t come true.”
“As stutterers, our words often go unspoken. We want to say something, but we just can’t, or we change the wording from what we really want to say or express.”
— Brandon Towle ’19
“Bran-don! Bran-don! Bran-don!”
The cheers come from all directions, players on the field and those lined up behind the dugout fence. Everyone here knows who he is.
“Bran-don! Bran-don!”
Towle finally bows to the pressure and grabs a red plastic bat, smiling as he steps up to home plate. His younger brother, Nate, the camp’s recreation director, is on the mound, the Wiffle ball game already underway when Brandon arrived on the scene.
If there’s any sibling rivalry, it’s not apparent. No one strikes out at Camp Words Unspoken. Towle takes a few pitches, swings a few times — until he puts a ball into play. He runs out a grounder to reach first. A few batters later, he scores from third, thrusting his fists into the air after crossing home plate.
“Woohoo!”
As the camp’s executive director, Towle tries to attend every activity, but running them is his brother Nate’s responsibility.
“I’m more of a behind-the-scenes guy at camp,” he says. “And when camp is not in session, I’m the only guy.”
Soon, clipboard and walkie-talkie in hand, he hops back in a golf cart — the camp’s only one — and speeds off to check on the improv group meeting in the gymnasium.
After a two-year delay, Camp Words Unspoken finally opened in August 2022 and has run for one week every summer since on the grounds of Camp Winadu, a family-owned, 88-acre facility on Lake Onota in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
At the Camp Winadu entrance, a temporary sign staked awkwardly in the grass tells visitors they are in the right place: “Camp Words Unspoken, New England’s first overnight camp for youths and teens who stutter.”
Earlier in the day, Towle meets me there with the golf cart. For late August, it’s unseasonably cold, in the low 50s, and damp. Towle is wearing a gray and green Camp Words Unspoken-branded pullover — and shorts. He didn’t pack any long pants for the week.
“I feel bad for the kids,” he says. “Summer camp should be in the 80s.”
A nametag hanging from his neck identifies him: “Brandon. Founder & Director.” An add-on sticker elaborates: “Change Maker.” Another says, “It’s OK to stutter.”
Camp Words Unspoken lawn signs line the pathway leading to a row of rustic camp cabins:
“Welcome”
“Building Confident Communicators”
“Friendships, Memories Forever”
“You Can Change the World”
“Your Voice Matters”
“I view our camp as a place where campers can come, build friendships and self-confidence,” he says.
“Many of our campers come never having met another child who stutters. Here, they don’t have to worry about the stigma, the fear of speaking. There’s no isolation here, and they know they’re not alone.”
— Brandon Towle ’19
According to statistics, only 1 percent of the general population stutters, but 5 percent of children. Often, stuttering worsens in adolescence because of hormones and the general anxiety of being a teenager.
“Many of our campers come never having met another child who stutters,” says Towle. “Here, they don’t have to worry about the stigma, the fear of speaking. There’s no isolation here, and they know they’re not alone.”
In 2022, the camp’s first year, Towle exceeded his goal of attracting 30 campers. For 2023, he expanded his marketing territory beyond the six New England states to include New York and New Jersey. Earlier in the summer of 2024, he also ran a four-day Camp Words Unspoken in Paisley, Florida.
“We’re doing exciting work,” he says. “Camps like these are needed.”
This summer, 2024, there are 37 campers in Pittsfield ranging in age from 7 to 17, with 24 returning, 13 new, and 10 who had never before met another child who stutters.
“If Camp Words Unspoken was not around, these kids might feel isolated and alone forever,” says Towle.
The progress he sees in new campers is dramatic, as he describes it. On day one, they’re shy, heads down, unsure how to interact. At meals, they sit apart and eat in silence.
“By day two, it’s the total opposite,” he says. “They’re running out of their cabins like they’ve been friends for years. They’re sitting next to each other at meals. They’re eating. They’re talking. They’re laughing.”
“I knew I had a problem speaking,” he said. “I didn’t know how severe it was.”
In his hometown of Westfield, the public school system paired him with a speech pathologist. About the age of 7, he visited a specialist in Boston who fit him with hearing aids for a kind of speech therapy intended to help with auditory feedback. He hated it.
“I got picked on and bullied,” he said. “I used to wear a Santa Claus hat just to cover it up, even in summer.”
He developed his own coping strategies, keeping quiet in class and guarding his social interactions.
Athletics became an invaluable outlet for self-expression and building self-confidence. He grew up playing sports with his twin brother Zack ’18 (also an HCC alum and previous Camp Words Unspoken counselor), excelling in basketball, track, and cross country.
Even so, in middle school, he said, his stuttering was still quite severe. Transitioning to high school for freshman year did not help.
“I always avoided going to school on the first day,” he said. “In every single class we would go around the room and have to introduce ourselves. As stutterers, sometimes the hardest part is saying your name.”
Despite continuing therapy, his speech declined in his junior year. His mother suggested he try a summer camp for stuttering youth she’d found in the Midwest. Before that, he had known only one other student who stuttered.
HCC appealed to Brandon because it was close to home and the school and class sizes were smaller than those at the state universities he had also considered.
“My fluency was very important to me, so I went to the camp and received great therapy and made great friendships and really had a blast,” he said. “My senior year, I was really much more fluent and relaxed and really came out of my shell and engaged a lot more in school.”
He liked it so much, he went for four years, two as a camper and two more as a counselor.
“I was invited back to be a role model and inspiration for the campers,” he said, “and it was a great learning experience for me, not only as a person who stutters, but I was working with youths and teens to build their fluency as well. I began to think, wouldn’t it be great to open a camp like this in New England?”
Towle says he learned a lot about business from summer jobs working at Shaker Farms Country Club in Westfield. He started out washing pots and pans there during high school before being bumped up to the banquet room, and later managing the golf cart barn.
“My thought coming out of high school was to come to HCC and learn about business, ’cause I’ve always wanted to own my own small business or work in a larger business and have a small business on the side,” he said.
HCC appealed to him because it was close to home and the school and class sizes were smaller than those at the state universities he had also considered.
“I wanted my professors and my peers to know who I was,” he said.
He found inspiration and guidance for his camp idea in his business classes, especially marketing, with Professor Karen Hines, and business law, with Professor Kelly O’Connor.
“All my business classes helped me,” he said. “I still hold onto all of my notes and books, and I look back at them.”
O’Connor, a former lawyer, helped him fill out the paperwork to make Camp Words Unspoken an LLC (limited liability company) and a charitable nonprofit, 501(c)(3).
“Out of all my schooling, kindergarten through now, she has been my most influential teacher,” Towle said.
As graduation approached, he never considered transferring to a four-year school. His goal was to keep working — and keep working on Camp Words Unspoken.
There are also special events. The previous night, they held an all-camp Family Feud match. (Towle notes that the TV game show host, comedian Steve Harvey, stuttered growing up, adding further that there is no cure for stuttering, only mitigation.)
Outside the cafeteria, Towle introduces me to a couple of campers I’d seen earlier playing Ping-Pong outside their cabins, Jonathan, from Mahwah, New Jersey, and Milos, from Stonington, Connecticut, both 11. They had met at Camp Words Unspoken the previous summer.
I ask them what they like about the camp. Clearly nervous at first talking to a stranger, they quickly warm up.
“It’s fun,” says Jonathan. “There’s a lot to do.”
“It’s just a nice place overall,” says Milos.
Then, without further prompting, they reveal more.
“I came back here to have just one week where I’m not worried about my talking,” says Jonathan.
“Here,” says Milos, “I can feel free to talk openly.”
The previous day, Towle had hosted a guest speaker in the camp theater, Amanda Mammana, a semifinalist from Season 17 of “America’s Got Talent.” During her initial TV appearance in 2022, Mammana introduced herself to the audience and judges as a person who stutters. Towle had seen the original broadcast.
“It brought tears to my eyes,” he says. “When she sings, she doesn’t stutter.”
Mammana readily accepted his invitation to visit the camp. She brought her guitar, told her story, and sang.
“The whole camp sang along with her,” he says. “It was very touching to see someone who is such a good role model for our campers.”
Having those role models is critical, says Towle. Of the eight cabin counselors, four are stutterers.
“Campers look up to the counselors who stutter and see that they can do anything in this world,” he says.
One of them is Alex Picone, a 2022 graduate of Temple University, who now works as a paraplanner for a financial services company in Pennsylvania. This is his second summer at the camp.
“The camp is incredible,” he says. “These kids are very brave. Seeing all the progress the campers have made in their own speech journeys is really inspiring.”
Before Camp Words Unspoken, Picone had never attended an overnight camp of any kind — in his life.
“I wish I had had the confidence these kids have when I was their age,” he says. “I’m definitely learning a lot, not only about the campers, but about myself and my stuttering journey.”
Picone gave up his only paid time off for the year to work at Camp Words Unspoken for the week — unpaid.
“I support Brandon and everything he is trying to achieve,” says Picone. “I’m really happy to be a part of it.”
And he is not the only volunteer. Of the 20 camp staff members, all but three are volunteers, a testament to their commitment. The only paid positions are the camp director (Nate, who took a week off from his own job as an aerospace engineer to be here); Debbie Bennett, the head speech and language pathologist; and Towle.
Bennett runs a private practice in Nottingham, New Hampshire, and also teaches at the University of New Hampshire. This is her third year at Camp Words Unspoken in Pittsfield. She also worked with Towle at the Florida camp. She has been an unflagging advocate and ambassador for Camp Words Unspoken since she first heard from Towle in 2018.
“I thought it was an amazing idea,” she said, “because we didn’t have anything like this in the whole New England area for kids who stutter. Brandon is the driving force behind the camp. He never gave up on it, even through COVID. I’m so grateful he decided to do this and that he gave me the opportunity to join it. I want this to continue and be successful.”
Already, she says, one former camper returned this summer as a junior counselor, and several others have expressed interest in doing the same.
“They ask me, ‘when I’m old enough, can I come back to be a role model for other kids who stutter?’ That’s exactly what we want.”
After Coca-Cola and a brief stint working for U.S. Postal Service, Towle settled into another job as the golf course manager at Rolling Meadows Country Club in Ellington, Connecticut, where he manages golf operations, runs tournaments and manages the pro shop and golf cart shed. More than just time, he invests a lot of his own money in the camp. To keep his own expenses down, he still lives at home in Westfield with his parents, who work as volunteers at camp fundraising events throughout the year.
“The camp is certainly a family endeavor, and one we have all supported from the very beginning,” says Brandon’s twin brother, Zack ’18, now a senior purchasing analyst for a security systems manufacturing company. “Along with immediate family support, such as brothers, mom and dad, our uncles and aunts, and even girlfriends, have also supported the camp in different volunteer roles. It is truly a blessing what Brandon has created.”
Towle’s long-term plan is to open more camps and build Camp Word Unspoken into a full-time career for himself.
“Because I’m passionate about it,” he says. “I enjoy it, and not many people can say that every day when they go to work. And I’m so proud of myself for keeping on with this dream and making a positive impact on children’s lives.”
Throughout the week, Towle takes every opportunity to tell his story and the story of the camp. At the opening ceremony, on day one, he introduces himself, welcomes campers and their parents, and tells them what to expect.
On the final day, at the closing ceremony, Towle recognizes all the campers individually, third-year campers, then second-years, then first-years. He invites them up on stage. Counselors hand out certificates. They pose for photos. They sing a camp song. Everyone who wants to has the opportunity to speak, campers included.
Towle goes first. “It gets emotional,” he says. He looks around and sees proud parents in the crowd and happy kids with their new friends.
He talks for just a few minutes, then passes the mic.
