Tony Meyer’s Surprise

He was a guy who kept mostly to himself, but those who knew Tony Meyer knew what a delight he was. Deeply intelligent, funny and well-read, Tony was someone you could strike up an easy conversation with wherever you ran into him. Sometimes it was at Espresso Love in Edgartown where he liked to eat his lunch on warm fall days, reading his latest favorite author — one year Daniel Silva, another E.M. Forster. Or maybe it was at the Edgartown Golf Club, the place he loved most in recent years, long after he had retired from investment banking and hung up his sailor’s hat. Tony defied stereotypes and sometimes surprised you with his opinions, his one-liners, the wise twinkle in his eye.

This week, two months after his death, Tony delivered a final, lovely surprise, in the form of his generous gift to the Martha’s Vineyard Boys’ and Girls’ Club: one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for an endowment, and another half a million to establish a junior golf program. The money will go a long way toward shoring up the club that Tony cared so much about, the one that operates perennially on a shoestring and provides a place for recreation and enrichment for the Island kids who need it the most.

This week the clubhouse off Robinson Road was renamed after Tony Meyer. And what a nice thing that is.