Taggart Bellas Young died on Dec. 23, 2022 after a courageous 10-month engagement against cancer. He was 41.

He was born on Jan. 27, 1981 at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. His childhood and early youth were spent in West Tisbury. He attended Island Children’s School, the West Tisbury School and spent three years at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.

In 1998 he moved to Florida to live with his mother for what proved to be a transformative year for him, sparking lifelong interests in philosophy and politically-oppressed cultures. He graduated from Naples High School with honors the following spring.

Tag deferred his enrollment at Bennington College until the fall of 2000, spending that gap year in the Center for Interim Programs, which took him to Australia to work with Aboriginal children and thereafter to New Zealand, Belize, Mexico, the Caribbean islands and his first trip to Jamaica.

While at Bennington he took another year off to travel to Europe and back to Jamaica, establishing a lifelong connection in and with the Rastafarian culture. Jamaica later became an important aspect of his family life; he and his wife Anna visited the adopted island every year, from when his daughter Kaya was eight months old.

His many athletic abilities were evident early in his youth: he was a baseball catcher, sometime golfer and avid skier. He was especially drawn to ice hockey. From youth hockey to playing varsity in high school to playing in a recreational adult league, and as a devoted fan of the Boston Bruins, he had a passionate love for the game, on or off the ice, all his life.

He possessed innate musical talent. At an early age he learned the violin in the Suzuki program. During a single year in college, he learned to play piano and mastered it sufficiently to give a recital at the end of the year. In Jamaica he learned to both play and make conga drums, some of which went to Vineyard musicians.

Tag honed clear leadership abilities in three Outward Bound programs during his teenage years. During the summer after his graduation, he was recommended by a teacher to play on an international hockey team organized by the People to People Sports Ambassador Program that took him, as assistant captain, to Prague. A dislocated shoulder sent him home early and that shoulder “list” remained with him for the rest of his life.

He returned to Bennington in fall 2005 and graduated the following spring. He then returned to the Vineyard and started his own roofing and sidewall business, at which he proudly excelled.

In 2011 he met the love of his life, Annabella Bolotovsky. They rented a house in Dedham and bought a mountainside property in Rumford, Me., in view of the Sunday River ski resort. In 2013 the house there burned to the ground and during the next nine years Tag rebuilt it, largely single-handedly and without debt. That became a summer getaway for his family. He always regarded it as his legacy to his children.

He was a man of many skills and extraordinary accomplishments, a devoted and loving husband and father, a loyal friend, mentor, leader and an inspiration to many whose paths crossed his.

Mourning Tag’s passing are his beloved family: Anna, his eight-year old daughter Kayamina and infant son Zurian, mother Kathleen, father Jim, sister Astrea, an extended family of uncles, aunts and cousins as well as Anna’s family members, and many friends, colleagues and acquaintances whose lives he touched in a memorable way.

A memorial gathering will be held at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 7 at the Clubhouse at 55 Broadlawn Park in Chestnut Hill. All are welcome. For those who cannot attend, another gathering will be held at the Woods Hole Community Hall in April; details will be announced at a later time.