The past 21 months have brought the kind of unwelcome news that shows one the universe has been knocked out of kilter. The kind of saddening news you don’t want to believe and has irretrievably made the world dimmer and colder.

During those months, I learned of the passing of three Vineyard friends: Dan Culkin, Robert (Roger) Rogers and Joe Coffey. Each one is a friend I made during summers on the Vineyard and each one embodied a special aspect of Vineyard life.

I met Dan Culkin through the Holmes Hole Sailing Association when I purchased a Cape Dory 270 cruising boat and was learning to sail. I joined Holmes Hole to race and in embracing the competition hoped to accelerate the learning process. Dan, still racing regularly in his 80s, was an accomplished sailor who skippered a 29’ Vineyard Vixen, winning the Moffet Race in 2000. He also served as the HHSA commodore and, most importantly to me, generously mentored me in the ways of navigating the tides and currents of Vineyard waters.

Dan was 95 when he passed and had lived a most fulfilling life. A gifted engineer, he assisted his country’s technical efforts in World War II while still a teenager and later worked many years for AT&T. But he most excelled with people. It was why he was chosen as a mediator when the U.S. government broke up AT&T in the 1980s. He once told me that you have to treat people as though they all had a valid and important perspective and were an integral part of the conversation.

A love of people defined Roger Rogers, too. He was the kind of person who went to the beach for the day, usually Long Point, and came home with new friends instead of a bucket of shells.

Roger’s gift was that he made you feel that your friendship and your presence were vitally important to him. When he said, “We have to get you over for dinner,” he meant it. And then he and his inventive wife Julianna would cook up a feast that would have you recalling it weeks and months later with fondness and awe.

At one such dinner, Roger started talking about his home in Brooklyn. Immediately, I called my 95-year old mother who had grown up there, and set her on speaker phone in the middle of the table. Roger greeted her like an old friend and they were soon excitedly talking about the Brooklyn Daily Eagle building where the Rogers’ apartment was located. Incredibly, it was the same place where my mother’s father had been the managing editor and co-owner of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper in the early 1900s.

A year later, Roger gave me a framed Daily Eagle Christmas poster that the paper had given away as a holiday promotion.

Roger made you feel that you mattered and he was perhaps most famous for the open-air dinners he and Juliana held in the fall on the lawn at their Vineyard Haven home. A long table seating 25 or more would be decorated, brightly lit and set up with your name at your place. We would then sit down to a memorable meal, finished off by his favorite drink, limoncello liqueur.

Joe Coffey was a storyteller and no one enjoyed hearing the stories more than Joe himself. He seemed most happy when surrounded by several friends who were leaning in with rapt attention as he recounted an impossible tale that he would interrupt with his own laughter. It would get everyone else laughing, too. The warm camaraderie was infectious and made you feel privileged that you were included in the fun.

Often, the stories would be about fishing, which he loved to do, or about golf at the Royal and Ancient Chappaquiddick Links, a nubby, nine-hole layout with a hut for a clubhouse and the ideal setting for producing entertaining golf stories.

Every Fourth of July, Joe and his wife Morgan would hold a holiday party at their Edgartown home that would precede the annual parade and include all their friends and all generations. Joe would be on duty at the stove where he had prepared his special chilli and accompanying hot dogs. And, of course, there was his recipe for Beer Can Chicken, which begins with these important first steps: open can of beer, drink 25 per cent of contents.

To have lost three friends such as these — friends unique to the Vineyard and who helped make the Island such a special place — is an unfathomable loss. Vineyard friends whom you haven’t seen in a year, but with whom you easily pick up as if you had just seen them the week before, that is the magic of Island friendships.

And it is the magic that sustains you when you try to fill the hole in your heart they have left behind.

Rest easy, my friends. We will never forget you.

David Lott lives in Vineyard Haven.