Memorial Day 2010

Seen by the side of the road in North Tisbury this week: a photographer in jeans and a T-shirt training his long lens deep into a meadow of white daisies and bluebonnets. Stippled with late afternoon light, the exquisite flowering spring meadow spills out through a line of roadside split rails as if to say, don’t fence me in!

Perhaps they are the watchword for the season this year, where winter spilled into spring with ease and spring appears to be spilling into summer just as effortlessly. The bluefish are running and they’re catching keeper bass in saltwater coves around the Island. Windows in Island homes are thrown open to the warm, summer-like May air, and passing by one, the atonal strains of Coltrane float out across a lush green hayfield. It looks like the first cutting will be extra early this year. Coltrane and hayfields, now there’s a combo.

Memorial Day is Monday. Everywhere you look the Vineyard is open for business again, and merchants are stocking the shelves with an anxious eye on the season ahead. The Island economy has suffered badly in the past year, and many businesses closed their doors for good. But now there are new ones taking their place, and this no doubt will be a testing year for these new concerns, as they try the tricky task of making a business work in a season where profits must be turned in four short months. It’s a hard go, any businessman will tell you. But such is the nature of a resort economy, which is in a constant struggle to even out the ups and downs of its extremes: too much in the summer, too little in the winter. Real estate and construction, upon which the Island economy has become overly reliant, remain deep in the doldrums, but the upside of this is that prices have begun to come down a bit, making home buying nearly affordable again for some middle-class Islanders (how many are left?) More correction is needed, and it will be interesting to see what the summer and fall bring.

For year-round Islanders this time of year comes like the shock of plunging into the cold ocean water for the first time: it’s accompanied by a bit of a gasp. Suddenly we are moving all over the place: off-Island to college graduations, down-Island to shop for beach towels, up-Island for fried clams in Menemsha. Hello, summer, our old friend. It’s nice to see you again.

But Memorial Day is about more than just the onset of summer; it is also a time to pause for solemn remembrance of those who fought and died in wars. On the Vineyard that remembrance takes many different forms.

Today in Edgartown and Vineyard Haven, by long tradition elementary school children will march to the sea and throw flowers in the water in remembrance of those who died at sea. There will be songs, readings and recitations.

On Monday the traditional Memorial Day parade, hosted by the Island veterans organization, steps off at 9:30 a.m. on Pine Tree Lane in Vineyard Haven, and continues to Oak Grove Cemetery for ceremonies, before returning to the American Legion Hall.

At the Vineyard Museum in Edgartown an exhibit will reopen that includes a remarkable collection of oral histories from Islanders who served in World War II. Titled Those Who Serve, the exhibit will remain open until Labor Day and is a must-see for Islanders and visitors alike. Excerpts of two of the accounts — from Ted Morgan of Edgartown and Nelson Bryant of West Tisbury, both parachuters who jumped into Normandy — are published on Page One-B in today’s Gazette. They are a small window into this extraordinary exhibit at the museum.

Meanwhile, a forgotten memorial to the Island veterans of the Viet Nam War has found a new home. Crafted by Vineyard Haven sculptor and artist Barney Zeitz, the memorial formerly stood at the head of Main street Vineyard Haven. It was moved following the December 2001 fire at the Mansion House, and has rested in Mr. Zeitz’s yard since then. Last week it was announced that the monument will be moved to Martha’s Vineyard Community Services in honor of Tom Bennett, the longtime head of the Island Counseling Center and a Viet Nam War veteran.

It’s wonderful to see the monument, which has had a troubled trail and has not been loved by all, be given a proper home after all these years.

Call it closure as the summer of 2010 begins, like all summers on the Vineyard, full of hope and promise.