Here are 10 of the stories from 2019 that most engaged Vineyard Gazette readers in print and online over the year:
1. Obamas Buy Home. After testing the Island waters for almost a decade, former President Barack Obama and his family purchase a vacation home in Edgartown for $11.75 million. Boston Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck is the seller of the 29-acre property on Edgartown Great Pond where the Obamas rented during the summer.
2. Tony Horwitz Dies. Best-selling author, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and husband of writer Geraldine Brooks, Tony Horwitz of West Tisbury dies while in Washington at age 60, prompting an outpouring of grief and tributes. He was among the year-round Islanders mourned by their community in 2019, including Edgartown selectman and war hero Ted Morgan, Island youth center director Shirley Robinson and novelist Ward Just.
3. WWII Bomber Found. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finds fragments of a bomber in Cape Pogue Pond and later confirms it was a plane that crashed in 1946 during dive-bombing exercises, killing the pilot and a radio operator.
4. Kennedy Property Goes on Market. Caroline Kennedy announces that her family will sell the 340-acre oceanfront property in Aquinnah acquired more than 40 years before by her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The asking price is $65 million.
5. Chilmark Chocolates Closes. Chilmark Chocolates, the Island’s beloved candy emporium created to provide jobs for people with disabilities, closes after 33 years.
6. The Price of Popularity. A Vineyard Gazette community survey finds widespread frustration with summer vehicle traffic, and readers engage in discussions over whether Martha’s Vineyard has reached a tipping point where it could fall victim to its own success.
7. Mill House Razed. One of the oldest houses on the Vineyard, the Mill House in Vineyard Haven, is demolished before regulators have a chance to weigh in on its historic significance. In an after-the-fact review, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission fines the owners $100,000 and pledges more vigilance.
8. Tisbury School Woes. Just weeks before the start of the school year, administrators announce that Tisbury School students will be relocated because of unsafe lead levels in the rundown facility, angering parents and teachers.
9. Stormy Autumn. After a near-perfect summer for weather, the Vineyard is buffeted by rain and windstorms for much of the fall, knocking out power, downing tree limbs, causing erosion, canceling ferries and offering a training opportunity for the Coast Guard.
10. Disappearing Stripers. A steep falloff in the number of striped bass is linked to overfishing, and the scarcity of the popular species is evident to those who fished the eponymous derby. Toward the end of the year, regulators impose new limits on commercial and recreational quotas and calls mount for a full moratorium.
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