Thirteen years ago, Kathleen Hinni, dancer, teacher and dance choreographer brought the School of Creative Arts to Martha’s Vineyard. Since then the school has grown from eighteen students and five staff members to its present total of eighty students and twenty staff members. After the first year it outgrew its home in East Chop and was moved to Mrs. H. D. Gibson’s house, Hedge Lee, in Vineyard Haven.
Camp Winnecunnet, the Y.W.C.A. camp on West Chop road, Vineyard Haven, has been sold this week to Miss Kathleen Hinni, representing the School of Creative Arts which she has conducted in the town for the past several years. The sale, as yet uncompleted, was made through the office of Mrs. O. B. Weeks, formerly Miss Mary Nunes, of Oak Bluffs.
In the list of Vineyardisms offered by H. Franklin Norton in an article published in the Gazette some months ago, there appeared “as proud as a Cuffy”, doubtless referring to the family founded by Paul Cuffee who was born on the island of Cuttyhunk in 1759. Captain Cuffee was something of a barbarian in his taste in wearing apparel and personal adornment. according to tradition he used to get himself up in such style that he rivalled the barber’s poles, Christmas trees and firework displays.
The Cottagers will hold a sale at Hartford Park in Oak Bluffs on Friday, Aug. 2 for the benefit of the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Their tables will include gifts, food, white elephants, grabs, hot dogs and tonic. Mrs. John J. Goldsberry is serving as general chairman, Miss Dorothy West, Mrs. Frederick White, Mrs. Wilmer Lucas, and E. W. Finley, who is president of the Cottagers.
There will also be tables in charge of the following: Mrs. David Rappaport, special benefit, a doll; miscellaneous, Mrs. Herbert G. Louis; aprons, Mrs. Anna M. Ryan.
Students and faculty of the former summer School of Creative Arts on West Chop are having a reunion on the Vineyard, from August 20 to 22. Now in their 40s, 50s and 60s, participants will visit the school sites and reminisce about their summers spent at the school on the Island. They will also teach and participate in arts classes and perform for and with each other.
The Creative Arts Committee of Oak Bluffs is now featuring a well rounded cultural and social program for all school-age children in the Tivoli Building.
Through the help of specialists vacationing on Island, the following program is available for young members:
Swimming lessons twice a week under the able tutorship of Mrs. Madelon Stent, educational instructor at Columbia University; Mrs. Connie Koefoed, New York city Board of Education instructor; and Bill Julian, well known sportsman from New York.
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.
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.
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.”
Kivie Kaplan, national president of the N.A.A.C.P., who was recently vacationing in Vineyard Haven, took off on July 29 for a five day trip to New Orleans for the association’s Louisiana summer project in which more than a hundred volunteers from all over the country, boys and girls, Negro and white, will work from one to five weeks, paying their own expenses. A few will come from other countries.
