COMMUNITY
Kate DeVane
The Co-Founder of Island Autism Provides a Saftey Net for Vineyarders with Disabilities.
By Amelia Smith
Kate DeVane grew up with a mother who helped disabled people. “My mom is 92 years old now, and she ran kids’ programs and adult programs for people with disabilities. Before I even had an autistic child, I had a mother who was a giver,” Kate says. With that community of disabled adults, Kate and her mother worked on landscaping in a park and restored a greenhouse there. The family came to the Vineyard for summers, and Kate rode on top of the car from the ferry to an old plywood camp in Chilmark. Those early years sowed the seeds of her later work life, first at Donaroma’s, and now as Executive Director of Island Autism.
After graduating from college, majoring in sculpture at Cornell, Kate moved to Boston. One weekend, she came to the Vineyard for a visit. “I realized that I wanted to live in a smaller community, not a city,” she says. On the Vineyard, she worked seasonally in retail and restaurant jobs, then year-round at Bramhall & Dunn on Main Street in Vineyard Haven. “There used to be this gang of older men with disabilities who just wandered around town,” she recalls. “There was a huge disabled community and they just hung out publicly and everyone looked out for them. I thought that this would be a great place to raise kids with disabilities, and it still is.”
In 1998, she applied for a job at Donaroma’s. “The only gardening and planting I had done was with my mother when she was working on that park space,” she says, but she learned as she worked. First Kate worked in their landscape division, then doing HR, running the maintenance program, and designing gardens. She put down roots here. “Twenty years ago, I decided to build a house, back when you could still do that, because I was moving like seven times a year.” She met her husband while building the house. “We had two large dogs and everything was lovely.” Kate’s pregnancy presented a challenge–she was 37, an “advanced maternal age,” and she was having twins. She had to go on bed rest at her parents’ house in Connecticut, and the Vineyarders with Disabilities. twins, Mark and Maggie, were 2 ½ months premature.
Back on the Vineyard, raising the twins presented challenges which Kate met with curiosity and determination. “We did all the early intervention stuff,” Kate says. At first they were most worried about Maggie, who had a massive stroke at four days old which delayed her walking and left her with a visible disability. Then, when Mark was a toddler, he stuck his hand in a really hot cup of coffee and simply didn’t react. A visiting expert from the Cape, who came to the Island once a month, looked at Mark for two minutes and said, “That child has autism.” More thorough studies followed, alongside school, starting with Project Headway. After preschool Maggie went into the mainstream classroom and Mark went into the Bridge Program, then the Boston Higashi School.
Kate and Marcy Bettencourt, who also had a young son with Autism, founded Island Autism in 2008. Kate worked to advance the organization and improve the lives of Islanders with disabilities alongside her work at Donaroma’s, where she often put in 60-hour weeks. With the purchase of the 17 acre Child Farm property on Lambert’s Cove Road, in partnership with the Land Bank, her workload ballooned to unsustainable levels. She resigned from the Island Autism board and asked to become the organization’s first executive director. “I’m just extremely fortunate to have had the people I’ve had in my team,” Kate says. “I didn’t ‘do’ Island Autism, there’s a whole lot of people involved.”
In her work at Donaroma’s, Kate had learned a lot about big jobs, which helped her move ahead with the project of turning the Child Farm into a place where Islanders would be able to work, learn, and live in a thriving community. When Kate was applying for state grants to support Island Autism, she said that she got some pushback because the place was “too nice.” “Why can’t people with disabilities have nice spaces?” she responded. The Island Autism campus is a welcoming, open space. Besides being a pleasant place to be, the new buildings have allowed Island Autism to work with the hospital and help with the high school Voyagers’ vocational training program, making dog biscuits and granola.
Kate has been recognized by a regional entity for her commitment to providing services to Vineyarders with disabilities. The Cape and Islands Citizen Advisory Board awarded Kate its Joseph Sattler Jr. Award, which honors people for helping the community. The board is part of the state Department of Developmental Services’ regional office; each region’s board advises area directors on its communities’ needs.
“Kate’s contributions to the Island are notable, and this award recognized her work on behalf of many children and adults with disabilities she has positively impacted on Martha’s Vineyard,” the Cape and Islands group stated in a public announcement.
“I have to say, I love it. I don’t feel like I’m ‘going to work’ except when I’m fundraising,” Kate says. “We’re just one big family. This is supposed to be a place for people with and without disabilities.” They’ve established a retail farm stand on Saturdays from 10 to 1, selling eggs, granola, and more.
Although a lot has been accomplished already, there is far more to come. Island Autism still needs support from the community to develop its residential programs. If you’d like to get involved, you can donate or volunteer at: islandautism.org.