Tom Dresser
It was Columbus Day weekend, 1994. Kaye Flathers was asked to read scripture at her nephew’s wedding on Martha’s Vineyard. It was the first time she had been to the Vineyard; as she stepped off the plane, the clear, bright air invigorated her.
In the late summer of 2004, Barack Obama agreed to participate in a forum on race relations held at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown.
The Chappaquiddick ferryman steered the On Time across the River Styx, previously known as the Edgartown Harbor, last Saturday morning. “Have a memorable walk,” the captain muttered.
Ninety minutes earlier an erstwhile cluster of 36 hikers had gathered at Quammox, not a Harry Potter game but a new Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank property of some 23 acres on Chappaquiddick.
Bill Veno convened the group of hikers promptly at 8 a.m.
When my aunt approached a toll booth, handed the toll-taker a fresh Kleenex and blew her nose in a five dollar bill, we knew she was a bit distracted. She often used the wrong word to describe something, and once, in a conversation about china at a dinner party, proved her point by flipping over a full plate, scattering potatoes, beans and lamb, as well as her tablemate.
SEEN THE GLORY: A Novel of the Battle of Gettysburg. By John Hough, Jr. Simon & Schuster, June, 2009. 420 pages. $25.
When Samantha Cassidy, age nine, was diagnosed with B-stem lymphoma, her parents, Mike Cassidy and Debra Grant, turned to the Martha’s Vineyard Cancer Support Group, a quiet organization unknown to many Islanders.
AnneMarie Donahue was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988; she became one of the original members of the cancer support group.