Noisy Gli de

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of June, 1983:

Neighbors of the Trade Wind Airport told Oak Bluffs selectman Anthony Rebello they’d like to spend this summer without the roar of a glider towplane overhead. Telling Mr. Rebello that people come to the Vineyard to get away from noise, the residents objected to allowing Robert Wilkinson of Wilton, Conn., to sell glider rides at the airport. After receiving numerous complaints last summer about noise from the plane that tows the glider, the selectmen agreed to hold a hearing before deciding on the permit application this year.

Anna Stibolt, a Farm Neck resident, said the glider operation was “not in keeping with our Vineyard way of life.” Mr. Wilkinson assured neighbors that his business would be “much quieter” this summer since he purchased a new plane that operates at lower power and has larger mufflers.

None of the 30 residents who attended the hearing spoke in favor of Mr. Wilkinson’s proposal, and Mr. Rebello read samples of the dozen letters received in opposition. No decision was reached, but Mr. Rebello warned Mr. Wilkinson not to be optimistic. “This is one of the few hearings I’ve attended where there is so much opposition,” Mr. Rebello said.

Mr. and Mrs. Earl Ray Dixon of Lorton, Va, are happy to announce the marriage of their daughter Donna Lynn to Daniel Edward Aykroyd, son of Mr. and Mrs. Peter U. Aykroyd of Sydenham, Ontario, Canada.

The ceremony, a simple, private one, took place in Chilmark. The bride wore an antique dress of muslin, embroidery and lace.

The couple will divide their time between Los Angeles and their Chilmark home.

The pay is low, yet the competition is fierce for top jobs on the Vineyard.

There were 78 applications for the director’s position of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission; 60 applicants for the airport manager’s position; 29 applicants for the director of social services at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital; 23 applicants for the director of the Mental Health Center of Community Services; 32 applicants for the director of special needs in the school system.

Committees — usually one for every top job — confront a mountain of cover letters, resumes and letters of reference. They grapple with questions pragmatic in nature: how do we get the person we want for the money we’re paying? And questions philosophic, too: this applicant is good, but is he an Island person?

Many applicants see a move to the Island as a break with an urban or suburban existence that no longer holds meaning. The Island is a place where they hope to effect change in their own lives, the applicants say. Typically about five applicants are called in for interviews. They are asked hard questions. Invariably, one question is asked: Why do you want to come to the Vineyard? It is critical for the interviewers and the applicant to agree that a prospective employee can be happy on the Island.

Always, many applicants are called and only one can be chosen, so there are many more disappointments than successes.

But still the applications come.

The unmarked but not unknown grave of comedian John Belushi was moved quietly to a more remote corner of the small hillside cemetery in Chilmark two weeks ago.

The move grew out of concern from the Belushi family and the town of Chilmark over rising public pressure to visit the grave. Both the family and town officials wished to avoid circumstances difficult to control, the kind of public spectacle that often results from too much notoriety. The decision to shift the gravesite of the famed actor from a part of the cemetery in use to a section in isolation passed without fanfare, public notice, or official comment.

It was a decision taken in deference to Mr. Belushi’s family, to families with loved ones buried nearby, and to all the comedian’s admirers who have turned his Chilmark burial place into a shrine.

Mrs. Belushi is known to be in complete support of the move and all the sentiments behind it, specifically that the new grave in a different location will allow the immediate family and the town to provide better care for the site which had become a problem at times. Constant public traffic to the Belushi grave had uprooted all the grass in the area and scattered messy debris everywhere in the vicinity. In the older section of the cemetery gravestones date back to the 1700’s and are fragile and in need of protection. Town officials felt their responsibility to protect an old and small New England cemetery where often the elderly come to remember and to honor.

Compiled by Cynthia Meisner

library@mvgazette.com