The scent of mothballs had no chance to cling to Chris Abbot. Last year he retired from his teaching job, which included directing the annual school play at the Tisbury School. But only a few weeks ago, school principal Richie Smith inveigled him to return to the boards for Mr. Abbot’s third pass, rolled out this past weekend, of the musical Bye Bye Birdie.

“It was great!” said the rosy-faced director with his silvery mane of hair and beard, adding, “Opening night marked the first full production. We had kids getting sick, kids going off-Island. I told the cast afterwards they’d pulled off a miracle.”

Mr. Abbot also was rewarded with one of his many protégées, Barra Peak, now a freshman at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, coming back to stage-manage. Usually Mr. Abbot performed that function, so Barra’s responsibility freed him up to watch the play out front with the rest of the audience, after 30 years of never having done so.

The erstwhile career that led to this Island triumph began with young Chris growing up in Woodbury, Conn., but also visiting his grandparents’ dude ranch in Palm Springs, where the precocious three-year-old warbled along with a professional singing cowboy. Back home, at the age of 12, he met and began to go steady with Diane — his future wife of 47 years — who herself was 13. “Hers was the hand that rocked the cradle,” said Mr. Abbot with a chuckle recently at his hillside house atop Quantipaug in Oak Bluffs.

That early bond inspired Chris to invite Diane for summers at his Grandma Lucy’s place on Martha’s Vineyard. (Lucy “Bideau” Hart Abbot, sister of the late Chilmark writer Stan Hart, in 1963 was expelled from her home in Hart-haven for billeting the young black jazz bassist Walter Robinson, who himself went on to carve out a name in the music world. Lucy Abbot moved her summer quarters first to the big pink house that is now the Oak Bluffs Inn, then over to Look’s Pond in West Tisbury).

In 1969, Diane and Chris were married by a justice of the peace in Hartford, Conn. Mrs. Abbot recently found a picture of the J.P.’s house: The address is 610, a nice synchronicity since they later named their son Sixten, after the leading man in Elvira Madigan. Sixten Abbot, a graduate of MVRHS class of ’87, attended Rhode Island School of Design and currently works in Providence as art director for an ad agency.

Chris and Diane moved in 1969 to San Francisco, where Chris briefly attended San Francisco State. It was the dark era when the magic of Haight- Ashbury had turned to drug overdoses, rampant hippy homelessness, and the Zodiac Killer at large in the Bay area. And then the earthquake struck. Chris, Diane and baby Sixten speedily returned to the East Coast.

They found themselves drawn to the Vineyard when offered the opportunity to live year-round in Grandma Lucy’s place on Look’s Pond. Diane strolled down Music street to Alley’s Store. She was sold. The Jack-of-all-trades Chris won a position at Up-Island Auto where he repaired cars and trucks for 11 years. Diane had multiple jobs that flexed her own Renaissance muscles, among them at pediatrician Michael Goldfein’s office, the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, Vineyard Conservation Society, the high school, and the Polly Hill Arboretum.

Chris was encouraged to check out a newly developed teacher’s aid position at the Edgartown School. Earlier fun and games with theatre arts buddies Greg Coogan and Duncan Ross led him almost immediately to throw together plays imagined and mounted by first and second graders. Mr. Abbot transcribed their dialogue and stage directions into handwritten scripts.

When the T.A.’s original players entered third and fourth grades, he and they mounted more ambitious plays, culminating in an eighth grade performance of Pirates of Penzance, with Stephanie Whalen as music director and the late Ginny Poole (longtime staff writer at the Vineyard Gazette) as director.

During this time, Mr. Abbot received his master’s degree in education from Lesley University. Soon he was appointed social studies teacher at the Tisbury School under the principalship of Alan Campbell. The kid singer / dilettante musician / mechanic / teacher found himself in another all-purpose role: He filled in as Mr. Campbell’s assistant, taught American and ancient history round-the-clock, organized school inventory, and produced and directed annual spring plays. All of this effort was aided by the fact that the family of three now lived — from 1981 to 1992 — directly across the street from the Tisbury School, giving Sixten, despite the loss of Look’s Pond, entrance into the cosmopolitan atmosphere of in-town life.

Reflecting on Tisbury performances, Mr. Abbot said, “I jumped in and learned as I went. I had plenty of kids who knew more than I did. They were fresh out of summer camp as Apprentice Players with Lee Fierro [under the aegis of Island Theatre Workshop]. I even transformed study hall period into theatre class.”

Finally he received the stamp of approval from choreographer Cathy Weiss, who told him, “You really do know what you’re doing, don’t you?”

His first production of middle schoolers in a student body of approximately 350 kids was My Fair Lady. “I tried to use every seventh and eighth grader in every capacity.”

Mr. Abbot’s first run of Bye Bye Birdie occurred in the spring of 1987, the second run was five years later. The part of Elvis in the original production was played by young Willy Coogan, who went on to pursue an acting career in Los Angeles. Mr. Coogan is now best known for his ownership of the ever-popular Edgartown restaurant, The Wharf.

Over the years, Mr. Abbot directed well-attended plays, including The Beast of Jonathan Wilde, written by art teacher Gene Baer, and a West Side Story production which encompassed two Marias and two Anitas. Mr. Abbot mixed up Brazilian and Anglo students as Sharks and Jets. In true method acting mode, he suggested that during rehearsals actors suspend contact with rival punks.

Meanwhile, in 1992, Chris and Diane designed and built their home atop Quantipaug. The two-story house with its hardwood floors, expert moldings, and eye-catching décor was featured in Vineyard Style.

Over the years, Mr. Abbot has continued to direct plays at the Tisbury School, but he also kept an eye on protégées through their high school careers and even further into creative ventures in the larger world. Some of these former students include Kenny Romero, Sean George, Christopher Kann and Sabrina Luening.

It was “an awful lot of fun,” said Mr. Abbot. Meanwhile he critiques new orchestral music recordings (with a specialty in Mahler and Beethoven) for Fan Fair Magazine. He was also responsible in 2004 for bringing to the Island Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic.

Big changes are in the air: Diane and Chris have accepted an offer on their Oak Bluffs house and, for their part, they’ve placed a bid on a house in Westport. Diane said, “It’s got a brook in back which reminds our son of Look’s Pond, so he promises to drop by every weekend.”

Meanwhile, Chris’s sisters, Lucy, Jenny and Martha, live on Island, so plenty of opportunities will arise for the Abbots to show up on these shores.

Bye Bye Birdie turned out to be an apt farewell performance — as its title song says, [we’re] gonna miss you so.