If you look closely enough, you’ll find tributes in all directions — on the porch at Mink Meadows Golf Club, at the West Tisbury Library, in the Vineyard House conference room, even in the front windows of Vineyard Haven businesses. And for all those public displays of respect and affection, there have been many more private remembrances and even acts of kindness done in the name of F. Patrick (Pat) Gregory, since the news of his death raced across the Island one year ago.
On May 16, 2014, Mr. Gregory, 69, and a 76-year-old friend were robbed and shot while hiking near Red Bluff in northern California. Mr. Gregory did not survive; his friend, while critically wounded, survived. Their attacker remains at large.
Mr. Gregory’s senseless death triggered waves of shock and grief that crested several days later at a service at the Agricultural Hall, packed to standing-room-only capacity. Even today, a year later, his loss is still difficult to fathom.
“My father’s death was shocking to many,” said Shannon Gregory Carbon, Mr. Gregory’s daughter, in an email. “The violent end to his life lay in marked contrast to the way he lived every day. The Island has treated my father’s death and our family with uncommon decency. For that, I will be forever grateful.”
Mr. Gregory was a model for a life in the community, because he reached across organizations, businesses and groups of people, and yet the sum of his various jobs, duties and activities over the years — teacher, coach, businessman, town moderator, volunteer, sportsman— falls short of capturing what he meant to the Island.
As a math teacher at the West Tisbury School, and a youth soccer coach, he inspired many of the Island’s youth. In 1982, he and his wife Dorothy founded Educomp, the computer and office supplies store, first in Oak Bluffs and now at the junction of State Road and Main street in Vineyard Haven.
Voters in West Tisbury knew him as the embodiment of fairness and common sense, which he delivered firmly but gently, as the moderator of the town meeting for 23 years.
“He had the complete trust of the voters, and that is something which is invaluable,” said Ronald H. Rappaport, lawyer and longtime town counsel to West Tisbury who shared the stage at those meetings with Mr. Gregory. “He had a sense of fairness, understood what town meeting was for, knew people had a right to speak and also knew that no one had the right to dominate or be personal in their comments.”
He added: “Decent, kind, fair, thoughtful – he is the type of person who makes the community the way it is.”
At last month’s town meeting, voters looked up at a moderator who was not Pat Gregory for the first time in more than two decades. Dan Waters, who had closely studied videotapes of the past 10 annual meetings to help prepare for the task, paid tribute to Mr. Gregory and urged the voters to act in his spirit.
If they needed a reminder, Mr. Gregory’s face beamed back at them from the cover of the annual town report. And the town poet laureate, Justen Ahren, read an original sonnet dedicated to him.
Voters named the lobby of the new West Tisbury Library after him. On a recent Sunday, friends and family gathered for a low-key ceremony at the library, a place where he had spent many happy hours with his wife, children and grandchildren.
His hard work, dedication and joy for any task extended to many other organizations on the Island. Most recently, Mr. Gregory was treasurer of the board of Vineyard House, which provides temporary homes for those in recovery from alcoholism or drug dependency.
The conference room in the administration building has been named after him, a fitting gesture because he believed in people sitting down and solving problems amicably. Board president and friend Mark Jenkins had paid attention.
“He always strove for a positive outcome and made people feel like they contributed,” said Mr. Jenkins. “I personally learned from him from that particular approach.”
Mr. Gregory has been remembered the past year, both officially and unofficially, on the golf course, where he spent many happy times with friends, on the Vineyard, in Ireland, in Scotland and elsewhere.
The program for his memorial service featured him completing a respectable pass at the ball in his beloved Ireland. He had a regular game at Mink Meadows, where he played to a 12 or 13 handicap and kept meticulous written record of matches (he had been a math teacher, after all, and called the black and white book The Data Book), said friend and golf partner Jack Gray.
A rocking chair with his name affixed to the back sits right near the entrance to the Mink Meadows pro shop, alongside rockers dedicated to other members who have died.
So it was that last September nearly 70 golfers teed off in his memory in the Pat Gregory Memorial Golf Tournament. Each golfer received a hat, with “Uncommon Decency, 09/15/2014” stitched on the back. (The phrase, summing up Mr. Gregory in two words, was quoted to the family by Mr. Rappaport.)
The family has since donated $10,500 in proceeds from the tournament to Martha’s Vineyard Community Services and its Red House project, which will house a crisis stabilization facility next to the hospital aimed at addressing patients with mental health or drug emergencies. Mr. Gregory had been a champion of the agency’s programs, as well as a board member some years ago.
In smaller, less conspicuous ways, he has been remembered. Dozens of people posted on his Facebook page on April 6, his birthday.
And several Vineyard Haven merchants still feature a small sign in their front windows with a red heart and “Pat” underneath it, illustrating that the memory of the tall man strolling down Main street, whistling and saying hello to anyone within earshot, is still strong.
“You’d see it wherever he was, people wanted to say hello and he wanted to say hello,” said another longtime friend Chris Morse. “It was a five-minute exchange that left you feeling better.”
Susan Goldstein shared a classroom and 60 students with Mr. Gregory at the West Tisbury School from the mid seventies to the early eighties, and she and her husband Sherman have remained close to the Gregory family ever since. She served as his campaign manager in his first run for town moderator. She and her husband own the Mansion House, a stone’s throw from Educomp.
Reminiscing last week, she readily produced her phone and played a voice mail from Mr. Gregory she had saved, a message of congratulations upon the birth of a grandchild. “I think about him every day,” she said. “It seems as if people are doing small, personal acts, to try to remember Pat. On Pat’s birthday, I had an opportunity to do something good that I [otherwise] may or may not have done, but knowing it was Pat’s birthday,” she trailed off, her voice thick with emotion.
A terrible irony hasn’t escaped Mr. Gregory’s friends that, given the chance, he probably would have helped the very man who attacked him and his friend a year ago.
“Pat would have given him anything, everything,” said Mr. Goldstein. “If he needed counsel, Pat would have provided that, too.”
Tim Gregory, Pat’s son, said in emailed remarks that he once asked his father about spirituality.
“He said he believed that a person’s spirit lived on in the memories of the living. And in that way, he felt, a person never dies. I believe it too — both good and bad — and in my father’s case, nearly always for the better.”
There are signs around the Island that Mr. Gregory’s legacy of kindness, joie de vivre and hope have been passed down through the generations. One is Molly Houghton’s encounter with him.
For years, Mr. Gregory delighted in playing Santa at an annual Christmas party at the Morse household in West Tisbury, taking the time to learn about all the children and their Christmas wishes. Molly was among them, but by age 10, she had her doubts about Santa. It hadn’t escaped her attention that, as if on cue, one of the male adults at the party would disappear shortly before Santa arrived.
Molly’s parents tipped off Santa about her disaffection, and toward the end of the party, Santa returned and pulled her aside for a private word.
What he said didn’t necessarily change her mind about Santa’s existence in the real world. But Molly, now 17, points to that exchange as pivotal, when she again appreciated the spirit of the holidays, even the possibility of Christmas miracles.
“He just came up to me and whispered, ‘Believe!’, turned around and left,” she said. And just like in the movie, Polar Express, a bell from Santa’s sleigh appeared under the tree for her.
Comments (3)
Comments
Comment policy »