The student of Vineyard history, at least such history as has been published, will recognize the fact that it was largely through the clergy that things were accomplished during the first hundred
Sitting outside Up-Island Cronig’s earlier this week, Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School’s 2008 valedictorian Truman French appeared to wearing much of the earth he had shifted around a Chilmark home that day, during a 12-hour landscaping shift.
“I’m trying to get a couple years’ college paid for,” he explained. Along with the rest of his class, Truman finished his final classes less than a week ago.
When Warren Doty first moved the Vineyard in the late 1970s, the Menemsha harborfront was booming.
“Then there were five boats landing 10,000 pounds of sea scallops every three days,” he recalled. “There was a work force of ten shuckers in three different shucking shacks. That’s 30 Islanders working on the docks with about fifteen on boats. The season lasted from October to April every year. There were 45 to 50 jobs in Menemsha for six to eight months during the season.
Tucked into the corner of the Woodland Business Center in Vineyard Haven, between the bakeries and offices in this off-the-beaten-path part of town, is an office door. On a recent Monday, just shy of 9 a.m., workers passed right by it in their beeline pursuit of morning coffee. Not one paused to look in.
Had they done so, an empty hallway is all they would have seen.
The day outside was cold. A real winter northeaster was blowing in and the gray clouds above promised snow. The door to Vera Shorter’s Vineyard Haven home, however, was open.
She had just indulged in what is quite possibly her only vice she said as she spread a stack of ginger snaps on a plate. She braved the cold so her home would not smell like the cigarettes she cannot seem to give up. She would hate for the smoke to offend the guests who stop in from time to time.
Michael J. Fox, television and movie star, has walked his share of
red carpets over the years. These days, though, he walks a more
nondescript bit of floor covering: a cheap sisal mat in the garage of
his Aquinnah house. Pacing, back and forth, doing laps of the pool table
trying to harness the involuntary energy of his illness. Hours upon
hours of pacing.
Marie Allen is at home in the comfortable study that she built at her Munroe avenue house in Oak Bluffs: a place to read books and listen to the blues, where a carved wooden giraffe peers from behind the couch, African figurines line a tall bookcase and her granddaughter's stuffed toy dog rests on a cushion.
Mrs. Allen also is at home on Martha's Vineyard: an Island where she was married, where her children took their first steps, where her own daughter was married and where she retired about six years ago.
