Last fall you published a letter from me thanking our Island community for their support of the American Heroes Fishing Challenge. Now in its fifth year and organized by the Nixon family and Beach Plum Inn, the heroes challenge is a tournament within the Annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.
Last fall a group of nine soldiers arrived in Menemsha to compete in the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.
Sunday afternoon was the first time Colton Wiley of Keofauqua, Iowa had ever seen the ocean. Three months ago he was shot in the legs in Afghanistan, leaving the 19 year old wheelchair bound. Now, on a beautiful September evening on Menemsha Beach, he was watching his first sunset over the Atlantic Ocean.
“It’s beautiful and completely eye opening,” he said later that night during dinner at the Beach Plum Inn.
Mr. Wiley was one of 10 wounded and recovering soldiers who visited the Island this week for the fourth annual American Heroes Saltwater Challenge.
‘Tis derby season. In just two days the Vineyard community will undergo a large transformation as the 67th annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby, the Island’s annual Olympics for fisherman, begins.
“There’s my hero,” said Martha’s Vineyard Surfcasters Association president Janet Messineo as Emanuel Thompson walked into the Beach Plum Inn on Thursday morning. It had been a day since Mr. Thompson, an Air Force veteran from Virginia, had caught his derby-leading 34.72-pound striper on Capt. Buddy Vanderhoop’s charter boat Tomahawk out of Menemsha, but he was still beaming.
Saltwater Heroes
The idea came from an eight-year-old Chilmark boy. Three years ago young Jack Nixon was reading journalist David Kinney’s book The Big One, the hot new fishing read of the summer that year about the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby. As Jack was reading, he gazed at a newspaper nearby and had a sudden thought: He wished that some of the men who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan could fish the derby.