The reason that the Memorial Wharf pavilion could be lifted up whole and set down clear of the reconstruction area is Kent Healy. He designed the very simple galvanized brackets that keep the structure’s wooden posts securely upright.

At Vineyard Land Surveying, we called him Doctor Healy, in recognition of his civil engineering degree. Every time I saw him, I remembered a joke that I heard as a child wherein a person was introduced at a party as a civil engineer and the other person replied that they had actually known him for years and that he was indeed a most polite engineer.

He had many adages in his vocabulary. My favorite was when he was asked about the properties of a soil that appeared at first glance to be impermeable, he often said, “Not so bad.” He developed a sophisticated method for measuring the permeability of soils that made dumping a bucket of water in a hole seem uncivilized. He figured that, over his lifetime, he had dug several miles of soil test holes with his hand auger. A dozen feet at a time.

He said once at a conference that, given enough time and area, he could percolate a paved parking lot. I was with him at that conference. It was dedicated to the effect of subservice wastewater disposal systems on groundwater. It was attended by Environmental Protection Agency and engineering bigwigs from all over New England. When Kent was introduced, he received a standing ovation. After a few moments of grinning back at us, he said, “Settle down. We’ve got a lot of material to cover.”