Julia Wells
She was an Oak Bluffs selectman and I was a cub reporter for the New Bedford Standard Times. The year was 1973. Geraldyne DeBettencourt had recently been elected as the first woman selectman on the Vineyard. It was quite a milestone when you think about it now, especially placed in the context of nearly four decades ago when Island government was a dyed-in-the-wool, old-boy network. My professional world too was heavily populated by men, most of them kindly, small-town newspapermen who were willing to take me under their wing.
Acting well out of the public eye, Dukes County sheriff Michael McCormack quietly agreed last month to allow Kelly McCarron, the young woman who was drunk and driving the car the night 18-year-old Jena Pothier was killed in June 2009, to leave a Barnstable correctional facility for women less than seven months into a one-year term. Ms. McCarron has returned to the Vineyard to serve out the remainder of her sentence at home under electronic surveillance.
The Vineyard Gazette, the family-owned weekly newspaper that has been a prominent, much-decorated and enduring chronicle of Island life for 164 years, will be sold to new owners, the newspaper’s publisher Richard Reston announced today.
Edgartown police have identified a person of interest in the arson and burglary case on Dunham Road; police also have seized cutting tools they believe may have been used in the early morning hours of Sept. 27 when a fire was deliberately set and propane gas lines were cut in the guest house owned by E. Burke Ross.
Police said this week they are focusing on a person who lives on property owned by the Vose family trust at 41 Dunham Road, directly next door to the Ross home. No names have been released and no arrests have been made.
Farm Pond, the 42-acre great salt pond that hugs the edge of the Harthaven section of Oak Bluffs along Beach Road, is ailing and at risk due to too much nitrogen, a draft study for the ongoing Massachusetts Estuaries Project concludes.
The draft report, which is now circulating among town leaders and water quality planners, also finds that rehabilitation of the pond is easily within reach and could be largely accomplished by significantly widening the culvert that allows tidal exchange between the pond and Nantucket Sound.
Police, firefighters and the state fire marshal are investigating a rare arson in the Tower Hill neighborhood of Edgartown, and the owner of the home is offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest in the case.