Julia Wells
Dukes County and Cooperative Banks Will Announce Merger
By JULIA WELLS
The Dukes County Savings Bank and Martha's Vineyard Cooperative Bank - two respected community banks whose presence on the Vineyard reaches back for more than 50 and nearly 100 years respectively - plan to announce this week that they will merge, the Gazette has learned.
It is understood that employees and corporators at both banks were informed yesterday about the planned merger, which is still subject to approval by state and federal regulators.
Philip R. Craig, the salty Edgartown author who earned national and local celebrity status for his popular Vineyard mystery series, died on May 8 at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital after a brief illness. He was 74 and had lived year-round in a renovated Ocean Heights camp with his wife Shirley.
High School Budget Must Be Redone
By JULIA WELLS
The Martha's Vineyard Regional High School budget now goes back to the drawing board.
This is the next step following the vote in Oak Bluffs this week to reduce its high school assessment by some $400,000. The vote capped months of debate among Island towns over regional school assessments, which were thrown into a state of widespread confusion because of a 14-year-old state law that for unknown reasons had never been enforced on the Vineyard until this year.
Art Buchwald, the familiar, funny and irreverent Pulitzer-Prize winning newspaper columnist whose decision to refuse kidney dialysis and end his life earned him international acclaim early last year, died peacefully at home late Wednesday night in Washington, D.C. He was 81.
Dr. Milton Mazer, the Vineyard's first psychiatrist whose pioneering work in the field of rural mental health led to the establishment of Martha's Vineyard Community Services more than four decades ago, died Jan. 7 at the Long Hill assisted living home in Edgartown, where he had been a resident for the past six years. The cause of death was renal failure; he was 95.
William Styron, the acclaimed novelist and leading literary figure of his generation whose summer home on the Vineyard Haven harbor has long been the hub of the area known colloquially as writer's row, died Wednesday at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital. He was 81.
The cause of death was pneumonia. Mr. Styron had been in failing health for a number of years.