With its historic carousel, best-of-the-Vineyard pizza and fried clams and Victorian seaside charm that is rooted in an earlier century, Oak Bluffs

Stand on the north shore of the Vineyard at any point as the sun begins to set and look to the west. As the last light of day floods the land and sea, in the distance you will see the silhouette of the lighthouse, a lonely sentinel standing on a promontory of land at the westernmost edge of the Vineyard.

Editor’s Note: Donald Mitchell, a lifelong Vineyarder, died last week at the age of 87. The following letter from him arrived at the Gazette office this week, more than one month after it was mailed, due to a post office error.

This letter is to thank my many amazing friends and the Martha’s Vineyard community for their ongoing help and support before and after my beloved husband of 56 years, Sheldon Hackney died on Sept. 12 after a long struggle with ALS.

I remember a saying: Don’t eat oysters in months without an “r” in them. And the Reader’s Digest Family Health Guide/Medical Encyclopedia, copyright 1970, says, “Mussels, clams, and certain other shellfish are dangerous during some seasons of the year.

About 37 years ago my dad took my son to fish in the junior derby. In a photograph of my son standing on the pier fishing, there’s another boy standing on a piling fishing. These two Camp Ground boys met that day and became forever friends.