If you read the Gazette last week, you learned that the Vineyard Nursing Association is having financial difficulties. The simple truth is that without a reserve or an endowment, we have operated for most of our 30-year history on the narrowest of margins.

If anyone has wondered lately when President Kennedy was last in Vineyard waters, our family can report we happened to be in a boat in Edgartown on Labor Day weekend 1963 when the Honey Fitz appeared.

Twelve years ago while studying the walking districts of Vineyard Haven, I became aware that the A&P (now Stop & Shop) parking lot would become a new town square with shops surrounding and connecting Main street to the ferry and the harbor.

Thanks for all the kind words in person and comments on the internet from friends and acquaintances new and old, congratulating me for bringing Martha’s Vineyard radio back on air. Few people are more pleased with this news than me.

I enjoyed Skip Finley’s Nov. 1 column that gave your readers insight into one of the Island’s true characters. I met Wayne in 1974 when I washed ashore as a newly-minted college graduate.

It is my personal belief that there isn’t a resident or visitor to the Vineyard who arrives via the SSA to Vineyard Haven who lauds the view that greets them presently: a rundown house, a broken-down building and the existing Stop & Shop.