Carole Simpson became a broadcast news reporter to make a difference.

In her work — she was the first black woman to work in the Washington, D.C., bureau for NBC and later moved to ABC as a weekend anchor — Ms. Simpson sought to use the power of her position not just to report the facts, but to make Americans see the injustices that plagued both their country and the world.

The Edgartown Fire Department is celebrating its 175th anniversary, and so, not for the first time, firefighters from Edgartown will have a prominent place in the Fourth of July parade planned for Monday.

It was the Edgartown fire department that hosted the first Fourth of July celebration in town, in 1844. The party included a lot of local pomp, a parade, plenty of flag-waving, patriotism and a dinner.

It reads like an old feel-good, hometown story. A local boy grows up on the Vineyard, watching his father and mother work hard. The father works for the Steamship Authority and then later runs an ice cream stand. His mother works at the local grocery store. The youth goes off to college, enters the corporate world, gets a master’s degree from Columbia Business School, and, through a line of successes, he and his wife decide to come home and take ownership of a longtime local business.

That is George J. Rogers Jr. of Tisbury and his story.