Maybe it’s time to tell our 90-year-old family secret because I am nearly 76 and perhaps the last in line who has heard the story from the storyteller himself.
Maybe it’s time to tell our 90-year-old family secret because I am nearly 76 and perhaps the last in line who has heard the story from the storyteller himself.
My grandparents, Ada and Henry Sillcocks, bought a summer house on Cottage street in about 1930 and they loved to take excursions up-Island in their old Ford Woodie. It was on one of those rides home to Edgartown, along the Airport Road, that my Grampa Harry accidentally ran over a bird, which tragically was the elusive, last heath hen on Earth. The bird’s death marked the very moment in history the species became extinct — not from fire, not from hunters, but as a result of a sad little car crash in West Tisbury.
It is interesting that the sculpture of Booming Ben is so near the actual place where it happened that summer afternoon.
The secret is out, the mystery is solved and our family conscience is absolved.
Margie Street Wheeler
Littleton
Comments
Oh boy! What a story. My
Alma Griffith Ivor-Campbell New Brighton MNOh boy! What a story. My Grandfather, Charles Savery worked at the very sanctuary where your bird lived. That is why my mother happened to be born in Edgartown in 1909. Perhaps our grandparents knew each other. Now I have another connection to the beautiful isle.
Margie,
Lorna Garron Weston, MA and EdgartownMargie,
Loved your story and would like to tell you I remember the Sillcocks !! They were friends of my grandparents Henry and Louise Meyer on North Water St. We are still there.
Lorna Garron
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