News
On Sunday morning, a huge nine-by-17-foot United States flag will be hung at an Eastville home as part of one family’s Fourth of Jul
Sail Martha’s Vineyard will give its first Walter Cronkite Award, in the memory of its staunch supporter and honorary chairman who died last July, to the artist Ray Ellis.
The award will be made at Sail MV’s annual Seafood Buffet and Auction at Tisbury Wharf on Saturday, July 10.
“Walter Cronkite might not have wanted this fuss made over him,” Peggy Schwier, president of the Sail MV board, said in a statement, “but he certainly would have approved of Ray Ellis as the first person to receive this award.
Tufts Degree
Duncan Pickard of Edgartown graduated from Tufts University on May 23 with a bachelor of arts degree in history, American studies and Middle Eastern studies, all magna cum laude.
Mr. Pickard was also named to the spring dean’s list at Tufts University.
The Massachusetts Society of Genealogists now has a chapter on the Vineyard. Meetings are usually held at the Family History Center in Vineyard Haven on the second Wednesday of the month at 7 p.m. Officers of the chapter are president Marna Waller, vice-president Mary Jane Carpenter, treasurer Patricia Johnson, secretary June Manning and membership secretary Brenda Welch. Meetings usually feature a speaker on topics of genealogical or historical interest, but time is also set aside for general discussion and sharing of information.
The scenario has played out on the Vineyard for decades.
Someone spends a lot of money to buy an expensive waterfront home and expects to be able to build a dock to go with it. The dock is denied by a local conservation commission. The decision is appealed, denied again, appealed again. The cycle continues, this time in court.
Martha’s Vineyard endured a precarious existence in those heady days of the young republic. As the founding fathers debated the philosophical underpinnings of liberal democracy in Philadelphia, entire British and Hessian fleets skulked just over our horizon (as reported by contemporary whalers). The vulnerable and largely defenseless Island was caught in limbo and few natives ventured to offend the Crown. As the war drew on, though, and these specters increasingly emerged in Vineyard harbors to exact their punishing toll, Islanders became patriots.