Camp Woodmont, operated on Lookout Mountain by the same family for more than four decades, is switching from a co-ed to an all-girls’ Christian summer camp after it was purchased by new owners.
But some parents, former staff members and campers are expressing their unhappiness with the changes online, and new owners Martin and Kelsie Tribble feel the backlash has become personal and threatening.
“We knew people would be mad and we, and we’ve got so much space for their grief,” Martin Tribble said in a phone interview. “But where we’ve run into some issues is the grief quickly turned into nastiness and bullying and harassment and personal threats of physical violence against our family, and that’s not grief. That’s something different, and I think that is part of the cultural landscape of 2024, unfortunately.”
‘THE ONE SAFE HAVEN’
Kelly McKenney drove her twin sons, 14-year-olds Noah and Keegan Furlow, 10 hours from their home in Florida for the past three summers to attend Camp Woodmont.
“For one of my boys, it’s the most crucial, most important thing all year long,” McKenney said by phone. “He has troubles socially and has had some difficulties in school, and camp was just the one safe haven that he could go to where he could make friends and be accepted for who he is and feel comfortable.”
McKenney said when she was looking for a camp where she could send her boys, she looked specifically for a co-ed camp because she wanted them to have the experience of interacting with girls and the opportunity to make friends of all kinds. They’re not a religious family, so she also wanted a camp that wasn’t highly religious, and she also liked that Camp Woodmont was family-run and technology-free.
She also appreciated the camp’s focus on accepting people for who they are and its anti-bullying policies. Her sons are autistic, and during their first summer at camp, she was nervous about them being accepted, she said.
“I picked them up the first summer and they were like, ‘I could stay here all summer; I could live here; This is the best place in the world,'” she said. “So that allayed all of my fears.”
She and some other parents were surprised and upset to receive a letter from the new owners in August announcing their decision to transition Camp Woodmont to an all-girls’ Christian camp.
More than 200 parents, former staff members and campers posted on the camp’s Facebook page about their disappointment in the changes, McKenney said.
“I, along with many, many other parents, have been very, very saddened by the decision to exclude our boys, particularly in the way that they’ve done it,” McKenney said, adding that the Tribbles let go of two longtime staff members, a director and equestrian program leader, at the end of the summer with little time to find new places to live for themselves and the horses belonging to the equestrian program director.
The negative comments were removed, and many parents were blocked, she said.
She feels it’s disingenuous for the Tribbles to advertise the camp as 40 years old and use the reviews of former campers on the camp’s website when it’s not the same camp.
“You’re not keeping Camp Woodmont, you’re having an all-girls’ Christians camp, and we loved what we had and wanted it to continue for another 40 years because it was so important,” McKenney said. “Some portion of the money that you pay for buying that is buying the goodwill and the name Camp Woodmont, and you’re no longer utilizing any of that goodwill when you change the camp completely to a whole different animal.”
Lookout Mountain is already home to many girls’ summer camps, including Camp DeSoto, Camp Skyline, Riverview Camp, Camp Juliette Low, Camp Adahi and Valley View.
McKenney said she and other parents hoped the Tribbles would recognize that they were changing a valuable aspect of the camp that set it apart from many of the other camps on the mountain. She hopes to find investors so she can try to purchase the camp from the Tribbles, she said.
Rita Haynie’s daughter, Sam, who has attended the camp the past three years, said the new owners increased the cost for summer 2025 by about $1,000, which is difficult for the family to afford.
Sam, who recently turned 16, said by phone that she hoped to work at the camp as a junior counselor, since she would have been eligible this summer. But the Tribbles now enroll campers up to age 16, and she no longer has that option.
“I understand the business is a business, but it’s just a lot of changes all at once that really rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, to say the least,” Rita Haynie, who lives in Cleveland, said by phone.
MAKING CHANGES
In a letter to parents, the Tribbles cited safety, programming and facilities as the three major factors behind their decision to transition to an all-girls’ camp.
“The physical, emotional and spiritual safety of campers and staff is the backbone of every decision we make at Camp Woodmont,” the letter said. “Very simply, we know that we can protect the hearts, minds and bodies of campers more competently in a single-sex camping environment.”
Martin Tribble said in a phone interview that no incidents occurred this summer that called the safety of female campers into question.
Established in 1981 as a co-ed summer camp by Jim and Jane Bennett, of Dunwoody, Georgia, Camp Woodmont was passed down to their daughter, Alyson Gondek, who continued to operate the camp until the Tribbles purchased it in the spring of 2024, according to the camp’s website.
The camp has been co-ed for most of its existence, aside from a few years in the 1990s when it was operated as an all-girls’ camp, Kelsie Tribble said by phone.
When the Tribbles announced earlier this month their decision to transition to an all-girls’ Christian camp, they were surprised at the intensity of the backlash online, particularly because no one reached out to them directly, Kelsie Tribble said.
She said she wanted to clear up misinformation that was spread about two part-time staff members who lived at the camp year-round. They were let go because their workload was aborbed by the Tribbles, who both work at the camp full time, Tribble said.
“We wanted to protect them and what our packages with them moving forward for the next couple of months are,” she said, referring to the compensation packages the Tribbles offered the former employees when they were let go.
Martin Tribble said that on the advice of their attorney, the couple did not want to discuss specific threatening comments made about their family online because they are considering pursuing legal action. The comments on the camp’s Facebook page were removed because the discourse was no longer civil or healthy, he said.
Rumors that the former leader of the camp’s equestrian program, who was gifted 18 of the camp’s horses before the Tribbles purchased the camp, is now homeless are unfounded, Tribble said.
“She lives 50 yards from us, and as part of her package that we offered her, she’s got a rent free house to live in for several more months, and her horses have free boarding in our pastures and barn throughout the end of the year,” he said.
Employees were notified in March that all staff members would be reevaluated at the end of the summer, Tribble said.
He said the two former year-round employees were given several months of pay, and the equestrian director was given more than 90 days to find a new place to live, but further details of the severance package are between the Tribbles and the former employees.
The Tribbles’ previous summer camp experience was at an all-girls’ camp, and that was the main reason they wanted to make the transition from a co-ed camp, he said.
“The things that we found this summer just did not feel like something that, as we continue to learn more about the culture and we continue to learn more just about Camp Woodmont, it’s just not something that we felt that we could run effectively with our skill set,” Martin Tribble said, adding that the couple feels they can run a highly effective girls’ camp with their background and the facilities available at Canp Woodmont, where the boys’ and girls’ cabins are closer together than at other co-ed camps they are familiar with.
“We just couldn’t figure out a way to get very comfortable in a co-ed camping environment where kids, where those kids were in our care, and so that’s kind of how we landed on single-sex camping,” Tribble said. “And because of our background in girls’ camping, it felt more natural for us to move that direction.”
He said Camp Woodmont was founded on Christian values, so the Tribbles were disheartened to hear that people were claiming the camp was not religious before they took over.
The couple said they have received positive feedback from people who are excited about the changes they are making.
“The positive response we got came directly to us and not to a Facebook group,” Kelsie Tribble said. “So we feel excited and confident about the future.”
Contact Emily Crisman at ecrisman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6508.