Two days before my longtime friend, Stan Hart, died, I had the distinct pleasure — and pain — of paying him a final visit. He was hooked up to an oxygen tube and was very frail. But he was very brave as well. He had wanted the Vineyard Gazette to interview him for a story in the paper about the publication of his two new books that he could see while he was still with us. The paper came out last Friday, with a fragile photo of him taken by myself holding those two books. And then Stan died the next day.

We had about five minutes in which to reminisce and make some tentative plans for getting together during our next lifetime somewhere, somehow. He made a point of mentioning how much he enjoyed our two hitchhiking adventures around the Island. The first time was around 1985. We stuck out our thumbs at Beetlebung Corner. He reported and I photographed the random pick-ups and drop-offs. Our collaborative efforts were published as a feature in the Gazette.

We had such fun doing it, that when I started planning chapters for my third On The Vineyard book, I asked Stan if he would consider reprising our little journey for the book. As usual, he was game, and full of enthusiasm.

So on Father’s Day in 1999 we began at Alley’s and hitchhiked our way through Tisbury, Oak Bluffs, Edgartown, and all the up-Island towns. For the most part, it was year-round Islanders who stopped to pick us up. They recognized us and were willing to put up with our antics. Our drivers included Joan LeLacheur, Larry Hepler, Carlo D’Antonio, Jib Ellis, Bee Bee Horowitz, Josh Montoya, Carmel Gamble, Barbara Lipke, and finally Anne and Sally Cook, who brought us back to our starting point. All our rides were full of laughs. They are dutifully chronicled in my book, On the Vineyard III.

But of all our encounters that day, the one that meant the most to Stan was with an exceedingly attractive young woman in her early 20s named Caroline Derrig. She was a tour bus driver and had taken some time off the bus to grab some chowder at the Broken Arrow, a food hut near the Cliffs in Aquinnah. As we bought our food there, Stan noticed that she was deeply engrossed in his paperback novel The Martha’s Vineyard Affair. She had just bought it for 25 cents. What serendipity! Stan was positively overjoyed. She pleaded for him to sign it, which he did with great glee. He later wrote in my book: “There was a 45-year age difference that did not alter the beat of my heart. I was just an old man hitchhiking whose life was now enhanced by the youth and beauty and enthusiasm of a young woman tour bus driver. Ah, what sweet infatuation. I dreamed that some day we would meet again to discuss my novel and I’d tell her how it got translated into Russian and published in Moscow. And she’d swoon.”

Ah that Stan — such a ladies’ man — almost to his dying day.

Stan was many things to many people. He touched many lives on the Vineyard. I have many little flashes stored in the hard drive of my brain. I recall one time, during his drinking days, how he flirted with my mother in law at a cocktail party, even though her husband was near by. I remember he once stopped me at Lucy Vincent Beach, a flask of vodka in hand. We were both nude. He commented, “Peter, do you realize you are getting bald, just like me?” I said, “Thanks Stan, thanks for reminding me.”

I remember what a fun softball teammate he was in the mid 1980s. A fine fielding first baseman who could hit line drives consistently the other way. I remember all the glorious tennis double matches with Ed Wise and my wife Ronni. Stan could put the ball just where he wanted, making up for his lack of speed with cunning accuracy. I remember our poker games that went until a late hour every Monday night. A good take for Stan would be enough to eat out at the Artcliff diner the next day for lunch. I remember going to the Red Cat bookstore many times for tennis supplies. Books and tennis — they were the constants of his life. And I remember the day I photographed him, along with several other prominent writers of the time (Milton Mazer, William Styron, Henry Beetle Hough and Art Buchwald). The group shot made the cover of the Boston Globe magazine during the summer of 1978. Stan was forever grateful that he could share the same space with writers he held in such high esteem.

But of all the memories, the one that means the most is when I turned to him for help in overcoming a serious but thankfully short-lived bout of alcoholism. I had seen how years of sobriety had given him back his life of dignity and grace. I wanted the same thing for myself. He helped me through the struggles of early recovery. I became one of his top priorities for that first year or two. And I am forever grateful.

He wrote an essay for the first On the Vineyard book titled No Exit from Eden. The essay is about changing from being a summer person to being a year-round person. He wrote: “It’s not still the paradise I had known, held onto while away and suppressed tears over each September when I had to leave. But in the glorious autumn and in late spring there is a bounty that makes it all worthwhile. And in the winter when I stroll through town I get that old recognition I used to get in the summer. I feel that I know everyone and everyone knows me and that I am home and what I do here matters very much indeed.”

Amen, and goodbye to my old friend.

Gazette photographer Peter Simon lives in Chilmark.