“I never dreamed that boy would be President,” Mrs. Norah Fuller said on Saturday. And probably he didn’t either. She was recalling the time when “President Kennedy slept here” in her Main street, Edgartown, home.
Harry Thacker Burleigh, eminent composer, singer, and arranger of Negro spirituals — and who was for more than thirty years a summer resident of the Vineyard — died in Stamford on Sept. 11 at the age of 82. He was one of the great figures in music in his generation.
A few summers ago the Vineyard, and particularly Oak Bluffs, was host to one of the most notable figures in the world of exploration, Matthew A. Henson, who watched Comdr. Robert E. Peary stake out his claim to the North Pole. It was not until many years after that world-shaking event of forty years ago that Henson’s true place in the picture won general acceptance and his heroism on the icy journey became widely known.
Matthew A. Henson, who is visiting the Powell family in Oak Bluffs for a few weeks, proclaims with twinkling eyes that he is too young now to go on Arctic explorations. He accompanied Admiral Peary on eight expeditions, was the first man to arrive at the North Pole and to raise the American flag there. He received an honorary degree of master of science from Morgan University in Baltimore ten years ago, and from Howard University in Washington this year. He also received an engraved watch this year from the Explorers Club in New York.
Harry T. Burleigh, the composer, who recently returned from a three months’ trip abroad, on which he was accompanied by his son, has arrived to spend the remainder of the summer at Oak Bluffs. He is the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Shearer at their summer home on Vineyard Highlands.
Mrs. W. O. Pinkham is to speak next Sunday in Edgartown, before the Men’s Club at the Congregational church in the afternoon on Suffrage, and in the evening at the regular church meeting at which she will speak upon “The Relation of Religion to Suffrage.”
