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Welcome to the new Tisbury School! It’s 1930. Students, staff, and teachers have moved into the new school on West William Street, to pomp and parades. The deteriorating old Tisbury School on Center Street, together with its overcrowded, two-classroom annex (known as the “portable building” or “portable school”) is abandoned, soon to face the wrecking […] ....
The Island has had its share of colorful names. There was Major Pain, the Chilmark lawyer who fought unsuccessfully to move our county seat out of Edgartown; Mayor Blood, who gave us the name “Cottage City”; and Captain Pound, the pirate who plagued Holmes Hole Harbor. There was Harry Legg, the Helenian carpenter; Dr. Lynch, […] ....
He was known by everyone as “Charlie Bell” (and in his Vineyard property deeds as “Charles A. Bell”), but that, it turns out, was just his alias. “Charlie was a sight to behold,” recalled the late Stan Lair of Vineyard Haven, “strolling the Main Street with a derby hat and cane, light-colored spats, and a […] ....
She dressed in men’s clothing. She was openly gay. And she ran this town during the 1930s and ’40s. “Laura Johnson [was] the real, real selectman behind the scenes, out of the express office, with her mannish sweater and her tie, and her hair pulled back, and her swivel chair and all the papers. She […] ....
Obie Tower liked his toys. Basil Welch reminisced about him in a 1982 conversation with my grandfather, Stan Lair, in a recording made about a year after Obie’s death: “Obie always had a sporty-looking car,” recalled Welch. “He always had a motorcycle, or boats, or something. He thoroughly enjoyed life.” “He also was a musician,” […] ....