Chilmark siblings Frank, Heidi and Peter Dunkl will receive this year’s Creative Living Award, the Permanent Endowment for Martha’s Vineyard has announced.
Self-taught craftsmen, antique restorationists, engineers, water quality experts and musicians — to name just a few — the Dunkls are widely known in the Island community and a Vineyard institution in their own right. They have been full-time residents of Chilmark since 1971.
“We can put in a well, design and install a septic system. We can shingle your roof. We can custom make a window frame or a sash for you. We can design, build, and hang a door. Anything you want, we can do it,” Frank Dunkl said in a 2009 interview with the Martha’s Vineyard Magazine.
“Small of stature but oversized in intelligence and determination, the Dunkls opted for self-schooling over higher education after high school in New Rochelle, N.Y. They used libraries and first-hand observation to feed their curiosity, developing a broad portfolio of skills in the process,” a press release from Permanent Endowment said.
The Dunkls founded and operated the Chilmark Spring Water company for many years, bottling water they tapped from a virgin spring on their own property near the banks of the Mill Brook. They closed the company in 2013. The same year, the nonprofit Island Grown Initiative bought their property in order to protect the pristine groundwater in perpetuity, allowing the Dunkls to continue to live there in the house they built themselves.
Frank and Peter Dunkl play the French horn in the Vineyard Classic Brass. Heidi Dunkl manages a large vegetable garden. All three are vegetarians.
A celebration and formal presentation of the award will take place on Nov. 28 at the Portuguese American Club in Oak Bluffs.
The Creative Living Award was established in 1983 in memory of Ruth Bogan who loved the Vineyard and was herself a Renaissance woman and Jill of all trades.
The award includes an honorarium and is given out every year in the fall by Permanent Endowment, a charitable community fund that gives grants to public and private nonprofits and provides a wide array of scholarships for Island students.
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