Notification was received this week by his family, of the death in the Gulf of Tonkin of United States Navy Lt. John Robert Painter Jr., son of Mr. and Mrs. John R. Painter of Hine’s Point. Lieutenant Painter was lost last Friday in an aircraft accident at sea, when he was flying from the carrier, Oriskany. Details of the incident are still not known.

 

The story of the building of Union Chapel just 100 years ago was told in the Invitation edition of the Gazette. Never in recorded history has there been so much change during a century as has occurred during the existence of this chapel.

 

During the eventful year of 1871 there had been bi-centennial celebrations for both Edgartown and Tisbury, a new post office had been established on the Methodist camp ground, and a new steamboat - the first Martha’s Vineyard - plied the sounds. Also, in that year, the Vineyard Gazette celebrated its first quarter century.

It was just 100 years ago that Union Chapel raised a spire 96 feet into the air. There was nothing else higher in the rapidly growing community of Oak Bluffs at the time, but a year later the Sea View Hotel was built opposite the new steamboat wharf, and one of its towers was 100 feet high with a flagstaff on its peak adding an additional 16 feet to the overall height. It stood on the bluffs, while the Union Chapel was built on lower ground. The Chapel Hill on which it was built was little more than a mound of slight elevation.

 

For the first time in its 16 year history, the Dukes County Savings Bank has reported assets over $10-million.

 

Bank President, John W. Osborn, announced Tuesday afternoon at the regular quarterly meeting of the trustees, that deposits had increased $500,000 since January 15 and now total $9,158,000, which is also a record high. New mortgages added during the quarter totaled $9,158,000, which is also a record high. New mortgages added during the quarter totaled $559,000.

 

A group of Islanders will be participating in the March on Washington on April 24, which is being organized by the National Peace Coalition, calling for an end to the Vietnam war.

 

Tuesday, and continue through Oct. 15. Striped bass and bluefish are the game fish to be sought, and for which prizes are given. The derby, often called the outstanding one of its kind on the Atlantic Coast, is also the oldest, in terms of continuous operation.

 

The derby is known from coast to coast, and close to 2,000 entrants from 22 states attended a year ago. The present promise of good fishing is expected to bring a crowd that large or larger.

 

With the recording of an agreement and declaration of trust last week, the Vineyard Open Land Foundation, first proposed in the Gazette of April 17, became a reality.

 

The agreement and declaration were signed by 12 original trustees: Jerome B. Wiesner, Mary P. Wakeman, Anne P. Hale, Herbert E. Tucker Jr., Robert E. Simon Jr., Edward J. Logue, Hans F. Loeser, William M. Honey, Henry Beetle Hough, Kevin Lynch, James F. Alley and Joseph G. Kraetzer. The eventual board will number not more than 21.

 

Dukes County’s quaint, picturesque, Georgian-Colonial red brick and white trimmed courthouse was the focus of much of the world’s attention this week, and the adjectives in the first part of this sentence are a fair sampling of the ones dredged up by the reporters straining to give their prose a desperately needed dash of color.

 

Kivie Kaplan of Chestnut Hill and Vineyard Haven, a civil rights leader active in the national N.A.A.C.P., was among those who attended the Peace March in Washington last week, and he has written the following account of that experience, which he described as an inspiring one.

 

“To see the more than a quarter of a million dedicated young men and women and very few adults certainly showed that there was hope for the future, with our wonderful youth of today.