From the May 4 1951 edition of the Vineyard Gazette: The Gay Head Light, oldest beacon on the Vineyard, has burned on for 152 years.

The recent news that the Nobel Prize-winning writer Mario Vargas Llosa had died immediately transported me back through space and time to Vineyard Haven.

The extreme clipper schooner, Shenandoah, Capt. Robert S. Douglas, master, arrived at her home port, Vineyard Haven, during the weekend.

The 83-foot sea-scalloper Stanley M. Fisher, Capt. George H. Fisher of Oak Bluffs, came up with perhaps the biggest catch of this or any other season last Thursday night, the Navy’s nuclear powered submarine, the U.S.S. Nautilus.

Twenty-five years ago, there we stood, the four of us, up in the stands at the Fleet Center in Boston: Mike McLaughlin, George Gamble, Tom Mayhew and I.