Andrea Henderson, 78, Was Summer Fixture at Katama

Andrea (Tinker) Bell Henderson died Oct. 25 at the age of 78 after a six month battle with cancer. She was being treated at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, where her daughter, Liza, was born, and where she had worked as a volunteer at the Women's Auxiliary and on the Medical Ethics Committee for many years.

Mrs. Henderson's ties to the Vineyard were extensive and deep. Until last year she had spent every summer on the Island for the past 50 years of her life. In 1954 her father, Russell Bell, bought a small plot of land with a fishing shack on Katama Bay, when that area was still all eel grass and dirt roads. He built a simple house there and his wife Marguerite created gardens where many thought it was impossible: a vegetable garden, a cutting garden, and an ornamental rose garden. Mrs. Henderson took great pleasure in maintaining those gardens in her mother's tradition throughout her life. In 1957 her father was killed in a plane crash in New Bedford along with several Katama neighbors.

Mrs. Henderson continued to spend summers in Katama after she married Patrick Henderson, and in 1956 their son Jeremy was born at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital. Both Jeremy and Liza grew up spending every summer on the Vineyard, in the Round House, the cottage their parents built for them on the property. Their own children, Mrs. Henderson's grandchildren Sam, Kate, Gabriel, and Juno, have been blessed with spending summers with their grandmother in Katama.

Mrs. Henderson's hospitality and generosity were legendary on the Island. Every year, for decades, friends and family from Canada, Europe and the mainland would come for long visits, joined often by Vineyard friends for festive dinners which she loved to cook with ingredients from her own garden and Vineyard farms and fish markets. She presided over these dinners with dignity, warmth, and wit.

In the summer of 1976 Patrick Henderson died and was buried on the Vineyard at Tower Hill cemetery where Mrs. Henderson's mother and brother are also buried. She began to spend six months of the year at her Katama home with her housekeeper and friend Ruthmary Lonsdale, reading, cooking, and gardening, until the cold of late autumn forced her back to the city.

There was hardly a local charity that Mrs. Henderson did not support: an early environmentalist and feminist, she was especially dedicated to preserving the natural landscape of the Island. She mourned the dramatic changes she witnessed on the Vineyard during her lifetime, but her fierce love for the Island never diminished.

A memorial service to celebrate Andrea Henderson's life will be held at St. Andrew's Church in Edgartown at 2 p.m. on July 16. She will be buried next to her husband at Tower Hill. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Sheriff's Meadow Foundation R.R. 1, Box 319X, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568, or to the Island Affordable Housing Fund Box 4769, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568.