On Sunday, Sept. 19, Michael Bacon, a longtime summer resident and later resident of Martha’s Vineyard, died in his sleep in Medford. He was 61 and is deeply missed by his family.

Mike had been an annual August resident on Tisbury Great Pond from the summer of his birth in 1949, living in Old Fields; he moved permanently to the Island in the 1970s, living with his parents, Margaret and Selden Bacon, in Vineyard Haven and Chilmark. He loved the Island, especially fishing and crabbing on Tisbury Great Pond in Chilmark, and found many friends on the Island over the years, whether in Menemsha, Quansoo, at Alley’s, tending the West Tisbury dump, or at the Fair. Even after declining health forced him to leave the Island in the 1990s, he would return for day visits, never forgetting his favorite places and never forgotten by those who knew him and enjoyed his cheerful company.

A graduate of Unity College in Maine, Mike was predeceased by his parents and is survived by his brother, Sam, of Blairstown, N.J., and Chilmark; his sister, Anne Robinson of Homer, Alaska; five nieces and nephews (Willa, Tim, Natalie, Deborah, and Brewster); several grandnieces and grandnephews, and a great-grandnephew.

Mike loved Christmas and celebrating it for his nieces and nephews. It would be appropriate that any gestures in his memory be made to the Island Red Stocking Fund to further their work in making children happy at the holiday season.