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Eleanor R. Piacenza, 93
Backed Chamber Society
Eleanor Rohn Piacenza died on May 15, four days after her 93rd birthday. A strong presence on the Island, Ms. Piacenza was a founding member of the Martha's Vineyard Chamber Music Society and a devoted archivist of her brother in law, Thomas Hart Benton.
Born in Needham in 1909, she was graduated from Wheaton College in 1930 and married
James M. Worthington shortly thereafter. She had three children, James, Jules and Caroline Worthington, all of whom survive her.
After the dissolution of her marriage, she met and married
Louis Piacenza, and then moved the family to Bel Air, Calif. The family barely escaped with their lives and a few precious family treasures, their dogs, Caroline's cello and two of her brother in law's paintings, from the disastrous Bel Air fire of 1962. This was mainly due to the heroic actions of Mr. Piacenza.
After her husband's death, Mrs. Piacenza returned as a full-time resident to Chilmark. Her late husband's brother, Santo Piacenza, joined the family and became a much-beloved member of the community.
She was a strong advocate in encouraging her children's talents. Recognizing her daughter's musical gift, she was tireless in making sure that she had the finest teachers and all of the opportunities to develop her gift. She was also a staunch supporter of her son Jules's career as a fine artist. Martha's Vineyard is greatly enriched by her legacy and she will be remembered in the concerts given by Caroline, now a world-respected concert cellist, and in Jules's extraordinary paintings of the moods and beauties of the Vineyard.
In lieu of flowers, the family would appreciate contributions to her most beloved cause, the Martha's Vineyard Chamber Music Society, in care of the executive director, Nancy Rogers, P.O. Box 55, Vineyard Haven 02568.
A memorial service will be held at the Chilmark Church on Saturday, June 1, at 2 p.m. A reception will follow at the home of Mrs. Piacenza.
Rev. Arthur W. Kennan
Served Island Churches
The Rev. Arthur W. Kennan, 90, former pastor of the Federated Church in Edgartown and the First Congregational Church in West Tisbury, died on Wednesday, June 19, at the Woodlawn Nursing Home in Newport, N.H.
He was born in Somerville, the son of the late Roy Arthur and Josephine Hare Kennan.
He served his country as a chaplain, attaining the rank of captain, in the U.S. Army during World War II in the African campaign, and in the Korean War, where he was awarded the Bronze Star. He served various congregations in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
The Rev. Mr. Kennan served the two congregational churches on the Island from 1955 to 1957.
In addition to his parents, he was predeceased by his wife, Sigred Dahlroth Kennan; two sisters, Rhoda and Irma, and three grandchildren, Ian, Joshua and Willam. He is survived by his brother, Roy; three sons, Erlend of Marblehead and his wife, Bonnie, of Hyannis, Norman and his wife, Madeline, of Dover, N.H., and Robert and his wife, Judith, of East Hartford; nine grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren and 10-great-great-grandchildren.
Interment was at the Forest Hills cemetery in Fitchburg.
Barbara (Bobbie) Nevin
Dies at Age 79; She Was Realtor and Towering Island Figure
Flags all across Edgartown - at Memorial Wharf, the county courthouse, Memorial Park and the American Legion Post 186 - flew at half-staff this week to mourn Barbara B. Nevin, a leading citizen of the town, who died unexpectedly on Friday at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis. Mrs. Nevin was 79 and the widow of Dr. Robert W. Nevin.
Bobbie Nevin was a Realtor and broker, a board member on half a dozen vital town and Island organizations, widow of the last house-calling country doctor on Martha's Vineyard, world traveler, expert jam and jelly maker and an irreverent spirit in the village. The news of her death jumped from house to house and street corner to street corner Friday morning. It felt suddenly as if the whole town had stumbled at the end of summer, for among Mrs. Nevin's many gifts and accomplishments, a central one was her ability to bring together hundreds of people who, by reason of work or neighborhood or outlook, would otherwise never have met, let alone befriended one another.
At parties on holidays ranging from Christmas to St. Patrick's Day to the Kentucky Derby, she would introduce fishermen, contractors and electricians to businessmen, lawyers and academics over steaming pots of soup in her home on Pease's Point Way. Those who might have been forgotten or perhaps even ostracized by small town life were taken to lunch at the Edgartown Yacht Club. The high school football team was welcomed into her home to celebrate seasons of both victory and defeat.
In all of this, she joyfully led and upheld a great tradition of the Nevin family on Martha's Vineyard - looking after people. Dr. Nevin, for example, was a general practitioner at a one-man office who quietly visited and cared for Islanders of every sort for 54 years. Her late daughter, Kate, was often the first person many young mainlanders met when they came to the Vineyard early in the 1970s, disappointed with the culture and values of mainland life and searching for something better on what was then a quieter and simpler Island.
Mrs. Nevin was also a leading realtor and broker on the Island. She started her business, Barbara B. Nevin Real Estate on Upper Main street in Edgartown, with one other broker in 1979, after working for another company for several years. In the following 23 years, hers became one of the best known real estate offices on the Island, each year helping scores of families and individuals buy, sell and rent homes in all six Vineyard towns. Among these were some of the most prominent visitors of recent years, including the staff of President Bill Clinton, the late Princess of Wales, and the stars and creative team of the movie Jaws, for whom she served as production secretary in the spring and summer of 1974.
The office, which will remain in business, was at one time the exclusive Vineyard representative of Sotheby's International Realty. But it remained an informal and fun business for all seven of its brokers - including her son, Robert - to work for, and one principle guided Mrs. Nevin above all others, said Jacqueline Ann Pimentel of Edgartown, a broker in the office:
"She was an ethical person, and enjoyed that reputation above anything else. She would always err on the side of caution and integrity. Her only prejudices were against injustices and hypocrisy."
To right a wrong, Mrs. Nevin would go anywhere. In 1963, her husband, Dr. Nevin, drove with four friends to a civil rights demonstration in Williamston, N.C., after another Islander, the Rev. Henry L. Bird, was arrested there. Dr. Nevin, a Republican, went as a Vineyarder, a physician and a conservative to demonstrate that equal rights ought to be the cause of everyone. Dr. Nevin was thrown in jail, too. So Bobbie Nevin traveled down to North Carolina as a Vineyarder, a Democrat and a liberal to bail him out.
Like her husband, Mrs. Nevin was renowned for her sense of humor, and the two of them made a remarkable and surprising pair of comedians. He was short, often dressed in dark gray, and possessed of the most captivatingly impassive poker face imaginable. She was a mite taller, expressive and more colorful in her dress, delighting in a collection of hats that would have made Queen Elizabeth II pant with envy. They would stand together at a party or on a street corner, and when, masterfully, Dr. Nevin began to tell one of his stories about some idiosyncrasy of Island life, Mrs. Nevin would watch him with her smile growing ever wider and more mischievous, until the doctor ended the tale with a thrillingly off-color observation, and Mrs. Nevin would cackle delightedly.
Her own ability to get a laugh relied more on archness and the delivery of an entirely unexpected one-liner. At her funeral service at the Old Whaling Church on Wednesday, a granddaughter remembered once when she and her grandmother were in Boston, having brunch at the Ritz-Carlton and watching a spring fashion show. The granddaughter was roughly 12 at the time:
"Shapely young women wearing dresses that had apparently been sprayed onto their bodies strolled between the tables striking poses, and I found myself staring at them and then getting very self-conscious for staring. Gam, seeing my self-consciousness, leaned over, patted my arm and said, ‘It's all right, honey, everybody is a little bit queer.'"
Barbara Barry was the middle child of the Rev. Gerald Van Osten Barry and Dumont deBirmingham Barry, born in Sloan's Hospital in the Chelsea section of New York city on July 4, 1923. She liked to say that she was born in Hell's Kitchen - though that is some 25 blocks north - and was intensely proud of and delighted by her birthday, festooning her home and herself with red, white and blue on Independence Day.
She entered Wellesley College but left halfway through her sophomore year in January 1943 to marry George W. Goethals. That marriage ended in divorce, and in 1952 she married
Dr. Nevin of Edgartown, who died in 1997. Between these two marriages, she had seven children, 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
In the early years of his practice, things could be hard for the Nevins. The scope of the practice covered all 125 square miles of the Island, and many of Dr. Nevin's patients were - as he was - of the working classes. The Nevins and their children often awoke to find venison or shellfish on the porch, payments from patients who could not pay any other way. But the family persevered, as other Island families did in those leaner days, Mrs. Nevin a constant support to her husband and devoted mother to their children.
Mrs. Nevin's sense of adventure took her and Dr. Nevin all over the world. Her passport reads like an atlas, with stamps from Malta, Egypt, Europe from Portugal to Hungary, Cuba, New Zealand, a ride on the Orient Express and a visit to the Great Wall of China. Accounts of many of these travels - which she continued after the death of her husband - were reported in the Vineyard Gazette between 1954 and 1972.
She was also fascinated by her genealogy, which included a French count, Irish nobility and - supposedly - a natural child of King Louis XIV. "Put your best foot forward" is the motto of the Barry coat of arms. Earlier this year, she made a trip to South Carolina to research the Van Osten branch of her family, which included an officer in the Confederate army.
She continued her travels and adventures with her grandchildren, whom she frequently took to Boston to walk the Freedom Trail, go to museums and restaurants, Filene's Basement, the ballet, the circus and shows on tour. To the amazement of children and friends, her tastes widened almost unbelievably during these trips, and it was not long before she was also taking these same grandchildren to rock and roll exhibits, Celtics games and the racetrack, where, in Bobbie Nevin fashion, she taught her descendants how to bet.
She was a talented needlepointer and maker of jams, especially marmalades and beach plum jellies, which she distributed liberally to friends at Christmas. From the first, she was a strong advocate for the Christmas in Edgartown celebration, which brightens the town during what is often a gray season. Mrs. Nevin was often seen hanging Christmas wreaths on shuttered summer houses and helping to string lights on the Christmas trees lining Main street.
Her involvement in the civic affairs of town and Island were wide and deep. She was a board member of Compass Bank, the Katama Air Field and conservation park, the Vineyard Open Land Foundation, the Martha's Vineyard Chamber of Commerce, the Edgartown Board of Trade and the Edgartown Public Library. For 50 years she was a member of the Edgartown Yacht Club.
Mrs. Nevin is survived by her sisters, Katherine Thoburn of Plymouth, Mich., and Pat Billings of Billerica. She is also survived by her children, Karen Goethals Colaneri of West Tisbury; George (Al) Rodman Goethals of Williamstown; Mary Jewett Goethals of Tucson, Ariz.; Barry Nevin of Edgartown; Sally Shiverick Nevin of Bow, N.H., and Robert Channing Nevin of Edgartown. A daughter, Kate Van Osten Nevin of Edgartown, died in 2000.
A funeral service was held Wednesday at the Old Whaling Church, the Rev. Bob Edmunds and the Rev. Theresa Payne-Gocha officiating. Mrs. Nevin was interred alongside her husband at the New Westside cemetery in Edgartown.
In lieu of flowers, contributions may be sent to the Edgartown Public Library, the Martha's Vineyard Preservation Trust or the charity of one's choice.
Bonnie M. Scott
Was Native of the Vineyard
Friends and family of Bonnie M. Scott were shocked and saddened to learn of her death in Shenandoah, Va., on July 26. Bonnie lost her valiant lifelong struggle against depression and mental illness.
Bonnie was born on Martha's Vineyard in 1953, the daughter of Raymond Scott and Helen Healey Scott. A resident of Oak Bluffs for much of her life, she had resided in Shenandoah, Va., for the past four years.
She is survived by her father, Ray, who makes his home in Sandwich; her sisters, Kerry of Oak Bluffs, Heidi of Venice, Fla., and her son, Ryan, Wendy of Bar Harbor, Me., and Sarasota, Fla., and her husband, Jim Smith, Melissa of Oak Bluffs and her husband, John Ricket, and Laurie of Sarasota, Fla., and her husband, Dan Francey, and daughter Alyssa. Also surviving are a large family of well-loved cousins, aunts and uncles and the many special friends who were her greatest gift.
A memorial service and a celebration of Bonnie's life will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, August 2, at the Oak Bluffs Sailing Camp Park, with the Rev. John Schule officiating.
If you wish to make a donation in Bonnie's memory, Vineyard House and the Friends of the Oak Bluffs Public Library were organizations whose work was important to Bonnie.
Nancy Walker Hand, 79
Cherished Time on Island
Nancy Walker Hand of Brookfield, Conn., died May 30 at the Danbury Hospital. She was 79.
Nancy Raymond Walker was born April 28, 1923, in Edgartown, the youngest child of Barbara Coffin Walker and Raymond Walker.
On her mother's side, Nancy was a direct descendant of many prominent Vineyard and Nantucket individuals and families, including Peter Folger (1618-1690), also the maternal grandfather of Benjamin Franklin, Nancy being Franklin's first cousin eight times removed; the Cleavelands of Tisbury and West Tisbury; John Coffin (1710-1791) of Edgartown; Thomas Vincent (1656-1740) of Edgartown; Simon Athearn (1640-1714) of Tisbury, and governor Thomas Mayhew (1593-1682). On her father's side, Nancy was descended from still other prominent Vineyarders, including Thomas Jackson Walker, M.D., (1845-1920) of Edgartown, and the Marchants, Butlers, Claghorns and Nortons of Edgartown.
During her youth, Nancy frequently traveled between Edgartown and Daytona Beach, Fla. She was graduated from Seabreeze High School in Daytona Beach and Sullins College in Bristol, Va.
Nancy married
Paul Hand of Ridgewood, N.J., in 1946. The couple lived in New York city and, after 1948, in Pound Ridge, N.Y., where they raised a family of four children. They moved from Pound Ridge to Newton, Conn., in 1968 and divorced in 1983.
Between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s, they were involved in wholesale, mail-order and retail sales of gourmet foods and cookware in Ridgefield, and then Brookfield, Conn., under trade names of Hand Brands Inc., the Rose Mill Gourmet Shop and Gourmet Foods Incorporated.
Martha's Vineyard was special to Nancy and she returned there frequently during her adult life. She fondly recalled childhood times with her cousins in West Tisbury and Edgartown and, later, with her family at her mother's summer compound on Pennywise Hill.
Nancy was preceded in death by her sister, Eileen, her father, mother and her brother, James.
She is survived by her eldest brother, Thomas Jackson (Peggy) Walker of Huntington Beach, Calif.; her sons, Michael Wilder (Karen) Hand of Chestnut Hill, James Stanley (Gail) Hand of Grand Forks, N.D., and Gregory Marchant (Nancy Schreiber) Hand of Princeton, N.J.; her daughter, Judith Hand of Daytona Beach, Fla., and her longtime companion, Candace McCann of Brookfield, Conn. She was also survived by eight grandchildren.
Norma Van Buskirk, 73
Led Varied, Active Life
Norma Van Buskirk of Vineyard Haven, 73, died in New Delhi, India following a courageous battle with cancer on June 16.
Born March 13, 1929, the daughter of Norman and Ethel Chaffee, Norma was graduated from Bates College in 1951. She married
Gary Somers and started a family, residing in Ipswich and later in Norway, Me. She enjoyed a wide range of activities with her family including education, skiing, camping, hiking, music, swimming, sports and travel; served as a Cub Scout and Girl Scout leader; was a member of the Norway Congregational Church Choir; a substitute teacher in public schools; taught classical piano privately from her home; sponsored an American Field Service Foreign Exchange Student from Austria, and was an involved member of community.
She married
Edgar Van Buskirk in 1980 and moved to Martha's Vineyard. Active in the League of Women Voters, she served on several committees, receiving an award in 2001 for her many services. In 1995 she received an award for her National Grange Art Exhibits, which were displayed in June 2002 at the Night Owl Gallery in Rutland, Vt. A member of the Pomona Grange, Norma was a lifelong musician in classical piano, a talented artist, an enthusiastic golfer at Mink Meadows Golf Club, a volunteer at the Community Services Thrift Shop and Nathan Mayhew Seminars, attended art classes at the Tisbury and Oak Bluffs Senior Centers and was a member of the Unitarian Church.
Norma was a loving and devoted daughter, wife, mother and grandmother. In recent years, travel to India was greatly enjoyed and became very important to her. She was predeceased by her husband, Edgar, and her only brother, Richard. She is survived by her children, Dave, Ron, Anne and Phil, and her grandchildren Jennifer, Lucas, Tyler, Kathryn and Meghan.
Services will be announced at a later date.
Sen. Royal Bolling
Was Distinguished Legislator
Sen. Royal L. Bolling Sr. of Roxbury and Martha's Vineyard, a distinguished legislator and statesman, decorated World War II veteran and patriarch of Boston's most prominent African-American political family, died July 16, surrounded by family and friends at his beloved Martha's Vineyard home, following a brief illness. He was 82.
He was born in Dinwiddie County, Va., on June 19, 1920, to Granville and Irene Bolling. In 1928, the family moved to Framingham. At an early age he demonstrated his trademark charisma, political acumen and unique ability to bring people together to overcome differences. In a campaign for his high school class presidency, he solicited and received endorsement letters from then-Gov. Leverett Saltonstall and Boston mayor James Michael Curley. Beating the odds, he became Framingham High School's first African-American class president. This experience launched his lifelong passion for politics and public service.
In 1943, while enrolled at Howard University, he married
Thelma Greene and joined the 92nd Army Infantry Division, the famous "Buffalo Soldiers." He earned the rank of first lieutenant and was a highly decorated combat veteran, earning the Silver Star, Purple Heart, four Battle Stars and the Combat Infantry Badge for his extraordinary leadership and valor under fire.
To combine his drive to be a successful businessman with his desire to serve the public, after the war, he attended Harvard University and began a career in real estate. This was a perfect avenue for this natural entrepreneur. Through his real estate business, which he maintained for five decades, he was able to support his growing family and help hundreds of families achieve their dream of home ownership.
In 1961, Mr. Bolling was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, launching his famous campaign slogan, "Get Rolling with Bolling." In 1982 he was elected to the state Senate. During his eight years in the Senate and 12 years in the House, he authored over 200 legislative initiatives, many of them groundbreaking. A strong advocate for equal access to education, his authorship of the Racial Imbalance Law led to the desegregation of Boston public schools. He secured the initial funding for the planning and site designation for Roxbury Community College and for the METCO program. Mr. Bolling was the first African-American to chair a standing committee in the House of Representatives. He served as chairman of the Public Service Committee to the state Senate and created and chaired the first Hispanic Commission in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
A consummate diplomat widely respected for his negotiation skills, Mr. Bolling was chairman of the Special Legislative Committee on Foreign Trade and was the distinguished guest of heads of states on four continents.
His love for public service became a family tradition. Royal L. Bolling Jr., his eldest son, was the youngest African-American in Massachusetts history ever elected to the House of Representatives in 1972. His second eldest, Bruce C. Bolling, was the first African-American City Council president in Boston history. As senator, state representative and city councilor, this family trio made national history as the first ever father and sons to serve simultaneously in three different legislative bodies.
Mr. Bolling now joins his beloved wife of 60 years, Thelma (Angela) Bolling, who died on June 15, 2002. He also joins his daughters, Diane and Rhonda. He is survived by his brothers, Donald and Orrie Tucker; his children, Royal Jr., Bruce, Blair, Thelma (AwRa), Richard (Yom), Carolyn, Deborah, Charlene, Andrea (Ra'nna) and Lorraine, and many nephews, nieces, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
There will be two services for Senator Bolling. In Boston, a service will be held Wednesday, July 24, at the Reggie Lewis Center at Roxbury Community College, 1350 Tremont street, Roxbury. Viewing hours are from 1 to 5:30 p.m., followed by a funeral service from 6 to 8 p.m. A memorial service will also be held on Martha's Vineyard on Saturday, July 27, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Portuguese-American Club, 137 Vineyard avenue, Oak Bluffs.
In lieu of flowers, the Bolling family requests that donations be sent to the Royal L. Bolling Sr. Foundation, c/o Fleet Bank at Dudley Square, 114 Dudley street, Roxbury, MA 02119; Fleet Bank at Grove Hall, 470 Blue Hill avenue, Dorchester, MA 02121, or Compass Bank, P.O. Box 323, Oak Bluffs, MA 02557.
Francis (Pat) West Jr.
Dies at Age of 96: Islander, Engineer and Man of the Sea
Francis (Pat) West Jr., a major Island personality enjoyed by all who knew him, died at the age of 96 at his Lake Tashmoo home on July Fourth.
Mr. West was one of the founding organizers and commodore for life of the Holmes Hole Sailing Association, which became the sponsor of the now well-
established annual George Moffett Race. In recent years, he organized a race exclusively for gaff-rigged boats to follow the Moffett Race by a week. He was quick to extol the virtues of the gaff rig and loved to debate its superiority over the Marconi rig. Friends later decided the race should be called the Pat West Gaff Rig Race.
From beginning to end, Mr. West's life was involved in one way or another with boats. Born in 1906 in Brookline, his family lived in Falmouth and Pompano, Fla. As a child he accompanied his father fishing from a sailing canoe as well as on Iona, the family's Crosby catboat, making passages from Falmouth to their summer cottage in Menemsha in the canoe and on one occasion transporting a cow, a family pet, aboard the Iona.
In his late teens, Mr. West delivered yachts up and down the coast and summers skippered the sloop Venture out of Vineyard Haven. Eventually he was able to purchase the Venture from the owner, who realized that he would care for her, after which he took fishing charter parties out from Menemsha and raised money for his college tuition.
After graduating from the University of Miami with a B.S. in physics, Mr. West worked on a patent for a remote-reading compass and spent one winter living aboard the Venture on the Hudson in New York city during one of the coldest winters in years. His interest in remote-reading compasses and, later, steering systems led him first to the Kelvin & Wilfrid O. White Company in Boston, where in 1938 he married
the boss's daughter, Isabel White. In 1940, the Sperry Gyroscope Company bought his patent and hired him as a project engineer developing compasses and steering devices.
The high point of his career came in 1950 when his lab at Sperry was commissioned to install the steering system for the S.S. United States. Under his direction a Sperry gyro-pilot was installed on the superliner, and Mr. West and his engineers sailed aboard the ship during her sea trials. The ship still holds the record for the fastest trans-Atlantic passage. When Mr. West retired in 1970 and moved to the Vineyard, he became the Island's compass adjuster.
He owned Venture for 40 years. When he could no longer keep up with the maintenance of the old 38-footer, he turned her over to Nathaniel Benjamin - who would rebuild her for his own family yacht - and replaced her with a 23-foot Friendship sloop, Erda.
Ashore, Mr. West had a lifelong love affair with bicycles. He always biked to work at the Sperry plant in Garden City, Long Island, N.Y. Later he rode to the railroad station and took the train to New York or Brooklyn. With his son, Danny, and a nephew, Frank Van Zandt, he belonged to a cycling club that toured Long Island early Sunday mornings and raced against other clubs in the metropolitan New York area. When Sperry sent him to Paris for three years as an engineering liaison, he daily pedaled his bicycle through the Bois de Boulogne into the city to his office. Pat believed it was important to get your heart rate up every day; until he was almost 90 he took a daily ride on the same bicycle that he bought in Paris up and down the sandy Herring Creek Road.
During the Paris years, deprived of his beloved Venture, Mr. West contrived a folding rubber kayak with outriggers and a gaff-rig sail from a Dyer dinghy to get afloat on the River Seine. When he had business in Scandinavia, he'd make sure he snuck off to Sweden to sail with a friend.
Mr. West was a great believer in the power of democracy and was an ardent Democrat, beginning with FDR. When Bill Clinton was elected, he got a group together and hosted an inaugural ball that was a great success. At the ball, Mr. West proposed a toast that turned into a lengthy speech on the importance of democracy.
Mr. West loved music: Louis Armstrong for dancing and Wagner for listening. His daughter, Christine, made her operatic debut in Seattle singing the role of Erda in Wagner's Ring. He admired the ladies and was quick to turn on the charm and invite them to dance if there was music handy. Growing up with three beautiful sisters introduced him at an early age to the ways of the female sex. When meeting a young person for the first time, he would ask, "Do you like to dance?" He thought it was important for them to know the joy of dancing.
When Pat and Isabel West retired to the Vineyard they remodeled the family barn at the Meadows for their home. They had been married
at the farmhouse across the road and scenes of the wedding appear in the film This Is Our Island, which is still shown occasionally.
In the last years of his life, Mr. West was determined to have the Coast Guard place a marker on the great underwater rock that lies southeast of West Chop, for he, among others, had hit it while sailing. He and Hugh Schwarz persevered for two years, dealing with agency after agency, until they gained the necessary approval. He was proud to announce that finally a tall marker had been imbedded in the rock, warning navigators of the hazard now called Douglas Rock.
At the urging of his friend Tim Chilton, Mr. West told stories into a tape recorder about his life and times aboard Venture. The result was a book, The Sloop Venture of Vineyard Haven, Stories by Pat West, published in 2001.
He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Isabel; a son, Nathaniel of Friendship, Me.; a daughter, Christine Goessweiner of Vienna, Austria; two sisters, Janet of Vineyard Haven and Sue Bruce of Menemsha and Ft. Lauderdale; five grandchildren, Thomas, George and Peter of Vienna; Christopher of Thorndike, Me., and Alexandra of Vineyard Haven; two great-grandchildren; four nephews, and two nieces.
A memorial gathering will be held Monday, July 15, at 11 a.m. at Pat and Isabel's home on Herring Creek Road. Please carpool when possible; starting at 10:15 a.m., shuttle transportation service will be available from the lower end of Daggett avenue to transport guests to and from the West residence. In memory of Mr. West, sail your boat to Tashmoo or ride your bicycle.
