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Margaret A. Willoughby
Was Native of Oak Bluffs
Margaret Ann (Peggy) Madeiros Willoughby of Vineyard Haven died Thursday, Jan. 23, at home surrounded by her family after battling cancer for the past few months. She was born on August 4, 1954 in Oak Bluffs and was a lifetime Island resident and attended the Martha's Regional Vineyard High School. She was the daughter of Dorothy Ann (Maury) Madeiros of Vineyard Haven and the late Ralph Madeiros.
Mrs. Willoughby married
Philip B. Willoughby of Vineyard Haven this past Jan. 22 after he courted her for 20 years. Mrs. Willoughby worked alongside Philip in the masonry business for 10 years and as he says, "She took pride in the business by the way she took care of the details. She was a perfectionist." She had previously worked for herself as a housecleaner.
Peggy was known for her sense of humor and her love of puzzles. "No mother could have had a nicer daughter than Peggy," said her mother. "She was special and will always be remembered with love from her mom and family."
She is survived by her mother and her husband; her son, Jonathan P. Madeiros of Falmouth; two sisters, Patricia Madeiros and Kathleen C. Madeiros, both of Vineyard Haven; a niece, Heather Marie Moreis of Vineyard Haven; a nephew, Maury Madeiros of Vineyard Haven; a great-nephew, Drew Moreis of Vineyard Haven; and three stepchildren, Brian Willoughby, Danielle Willoughby and Jameson Willoughby, all of Florida.
Funeral services are private. Donations may be made in her memory to Hospice of Martha's Vineyard, P.O. Box 2549, Oak Bluffs, MA 02557. Arrangements are under the care of the Chapman, Cole and Gleason Funeral Home, Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road, Oak Bluffs.
Mary B. Stevens, 83
Was a Founder of Arts Center
Mary B.M. Stevens, 83, of Hernando, Fla., died Saturday, Jan. 25, in Inverness, Fla. She had been a resident of Hernando for the past two and a half years, moving there from Martha's Vineyard. She is remembered here for her many years operating Featherstone Farm with her husband, William H.Y. (Bill) Stevens Sr., and for her role as vice president of Meetinghouse Inc. in helping to establish the Featherstone Center for the Arts on the 25-acre farm property.
Mrs. Stevens loved not only the arts, but also sailing and travel. She explored the world by air, land and sea, visiting such destinations as Italy, Scotland, Ireland, France, Guatemala, Hawaii and Bali. She traveled through most of the United States on camping trips, and also enjoyed sailing up and down the East Coast. She remained an active supporter of the arts to the end of her life, and recently wrote a children's book, Spot the Sky Dragon.
In addition to her husband of 61 years, Mrs. Stevens is survived by four sons, William H.Y. Stevens Jr. of Madison, N.J., Robert J. Stevens of Auburndale, Johnathan P. Stevens of Seattle, Wash., and Peter D. Stevens of Methuen; two daughters, Marylyn M. Stevens-Bugbee of Crystal River, Fla., and Sharon R. Stevens-Grunden of Oak Bluffs; a brother, Robert E. Miller Jr. of Newark, N.J., 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Memorial contributions in her memory may be made to Featherstone Center for the Arts, P.O. Box 2523, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568.
Milton Jeffers of Edgartown.
Age 77. Was Expert Welder, Native of Chappaquiddick
Milton Jeffers of Edgartown, an artisan and self-styled philosopher known widely for his welding expertise, died on Saturday, Nov. 18, at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital. Mr. Jeffers, 77, was the husband of Gloria Mello Jeffers. He was born on Chappaquiddick on Dec. 13, 1922, to the late Lawrence and Bertha Belain Jeffers. He was graduated with high honors from the Edgartown High School, winning a $750 scholarship and holding several Island records in track and field competition.
After high school, he attended the Wentworth Institute in Boston, where he learned to be a welder. His welding apprenticeship was spent in the United States Navy during World War II. He also worked for a time in Boston for Westinghouse, and in Quincy for the Fore River Shipyard. He told an interviewer from Martha's Vineyard Magazine this summer: "Welding is really like a science, and that's why I like it. You have to know quite a lot about metallurgy, which I've taken the time to learn."
Mr. Jeffers was highly regarded and widely relied upon by the Island farming and fishing communities for his welding expertise and his mechanical acumen. Edgartown fisherman Peter Vann told the Gazette in 1984: "Without Milt, the whole fleet would be tied up. This man can fix anything. Sometimes when I come out here in the morning, there are five guys waiting for him."
Mr. Jeffers was also something of an inventor, holding a patent for his scallop dredge and clam rack designs. Over the years he had the opportunity to repair all sorts of things mechanical, from boats to aircraft, and even once helped put a visiting Navy submarine back into service. A Vineyard Gazette story on Mr. Jeffers, published in 1984, referred to him as "the last Vineyard village blacksmith." He was a thoughtful and inquisitive man with a calm bearing and a natural dignity about him; he enjoyed reading, from poetry to works of philosophy. In a 1998 interview for the Linsey Lee book, Vineyard Voices, Mr. Jeffers said: "I've been kind of thankful that I was born on Chappaquiddick. It gave me an outlook on life I don't think I would have ever had if I'd been born over here in town. Used to go out in the fields and do a lot of thinking, and I've always been kind of glad I did."
In addition to his wife, Mr. Jeffers is survived by two stepsons, Matthew Silva of Douglas and Aaron Silva of Sandwich, and many nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by a sister and two brothers.
Visiting hours were held on Tuesday, Nov. 21, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Chapman, Cole and Gleason Funeral Home in Oak Bluffs. A graveside service will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 1, in the New Westside cemetery, Edgartown, with full military honors offered by the veterans of Martha's Vineyard. Donations in his memory may be made to the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School vocational program, P.O. Box 1383, Oak Bluffs, MA 02557.
Sally Fulton Reston, 89
Was Co-Publisher of the Vineyard Gazette for Two Decades
Sarah Jane (Sally) Fulton Reston, the wife of the late James B. (Scotty) Reston, died Saturday, Sept. 22 at her home in Washington, D.C. She celebrated her 89th birthday earlier this month.
From 1968 to 1988 Mrs. Reston was co-publisher with her husband of the Vineyard Gazette. Both in those years and for three decades before them, she was his constant companion as he traveled the world as New York Times columnist, Washington bureau chief and the newspaper's executive editor.
It was in 1965 that the Restons first visited the Vineyard, spending the summer in the tranquility of Menemsha so Mr. Reston could finish a book he was writing. The Island "took," and three years later, international journalist Reston and his "Gal Sal," as he sometimes affectionately referred to his wife, bought the Gazette from country editor Henry Beetle Hough. Mr. Hough, with his wife, Elizabeth Bowie Hough, had been the Gazette's editor and publisher for 48 years.
A few months after their Gazette purchase, the Restons bought the tall white 1804 former Davis Academy house on Davis Lane in Edgartown, just behind the newspaper office, to be their Island home.
But Vineyard sojourns were limited because of the travels that were an essential part of the Reston job. Scotty Reston's work was just as much Sally's as his, for she not only accompanied him and hostessed for him, but back-stopped for him, advised and counseled him, edited and photographed for him, though skillfully seeming to be only in the background.
Virtually every summer, however, she would make sure the whole family of children and grandchildren gathered together in Edgartown to celebrate the July 14 French Independence Day birthday of the Restons' eldest son, Richard, and the July 4 American Independence Day birthday of their youngest son, Tom, with a dinner of lobster, corn and peas. (James B. Reston Jr. Day, as his father thoughtfully dubbed his middle son's birthday, was March 8, but he and his family, too, would join in the Vineyard festivities as often as possible.)
When the fireworks began, the family would enthusiastically watch the soaring rockets and the sparkling showers of stars over Edgartown harbor from the North Water street porch of present Vineyard Gazette editor and publisher Richard Reston and his wife, Jody, for patriotism was a vital part of family life. When her third son was about to be born, Sally had emphasized to the doctor that she wanted him to arrive on the Fourth of July and, sure enough, she and her physician succeeded in delivering Tom 20 minutes into the holiday.
On her Island visits, Sally always made sure there was time for nature walks at Cedar Tree Neck or Felix Neck or a stroll around Sheriff's Meadow Pond. She joined the Martha's Vineyard Garden Club and worked indefatigably to try to save what she had been told was the Island's second oldest elm that shaded her Davis Lane yard in Edgartown.
There were often early morning tennis games at the Edgartown Yacht Club courts. Sometimes there would be boating trips out of Chilmark with the late Donald J. Hurley. And sometimes Sally would go out to take pictures for the Gazette or do perceptive interviews with such Vineyard seasonal residents as opera singer Beverly Sills and author John Updike. Former Gazette staffer Virginia Poole recalls how Sally won the hearts of her young reporters by always remembering the stories they had written and complimenting them on their work.
It was in mid-life that she discovered photography. She not only photographed with a sensitive and artistic eye, but learned to do her own developing and printing. From time to time, her pictures of the heads of state her husband was interviewing would accompany his articles in The New York Times. Her Gazette photos tended to be reflections in a still pond, boats bobbing at anchor, a gnarled tree, a small boy at play.
For all her round-the-world travel and years of sophisticated city dwelling in New York, London and Washington, Sally always cherished her country background in a small Illinois town and retained a love of the beauties and restorative powers of nature.
As a young woman on the eve of marriage, leaving Sycamore, Ill., the town of her childhood, she wrote about "racing the wind down the creek" and lying under the trees. "When you grow up in the simplicity and modesty of a countryside like this, your spirit remains colored by its skies forever, with the cool shadows of the trees, and with the sunlit green of the sloping fields."
She was born Sept. 5, 1912, in Sycamore, the daughter of William J. and Laura (Busey) Fulton. Sycamore, in those days, was a county seat of 4,000 set in corn and soybean-growing country. Her father, a lawyer, later became an Illinois circuit and supreme court judge. As chief justice of the state supreme court, it was he who swore in Adlai Stevenson as governor of Illinois. Her mother's family had followed the same route as Abraham Lincoln's family, from Kentucky to Illinois.
Sally attended public school and high school in Sycamore and, in girlhood, developed a great affection for the piano. With piano-playing friends or relatives she always enjoyed sitting down for four-handed duets of Mozart or Beethoven.
In 1930, she left Sycamore for the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. It was there, one December evening in 1931, as Scotty recalled in his memoir, Deadline, that the "big event" in his life occurred when he met Sally Fulton with the "dark hair and thoughtful eyes and a smile that made me feel funny inside."
He was a senior; she was a sophomore, but they became inseparable - even talking dreamily of marriage, and she accepted his fraternity pin.
Soon, however, he was graduated and writing about sports for the Daily News in Springfield, far away in Ohio, his home state. For one brief period, in a romance that was to last for 64 years until Scotty's death in 1995, Sally asked to be freed from her commitment to be his girl alone.
She was 20. He was far away. She thought she might like to date other men, but in reality, she was as smitten with Scotty as he with her. Though she thought she should be dating some of the time, she concentrated on her philosophy major instead and on earning a Phi Beta Kappa key. And she closely held on to Scotty's fraternity pin.
By the time Sally received her degree from the University of Illinois, Scotty was in New York working for the Associated Press. He urged his intended to come east, which she did, for a visit. Then, eager to be near him, she began her career in New York as a journalist. She was an editor and writer for Mademoiselle Magazine and later worked for Reader's Digest in London. On Dec. 24, 1935, the young couple was married
.
Two years later, they were living in London where the AP had assigned Scotty to write about sports and international affairs.
But next came World War II. Mr. Reston's journalistic responsibilities shifted to those of war correspondent and he moved from the AP to The New York Times London bureau. The family moved back to the United States, first to New York city and then Washington, which was to be their principal residence for the rest of their marriage.
Their homes were variously in Georgetown, in a house near the National Cathedral in northwestern Washington and, most recently, at Kalorama Square, also in the northwest section of the city. When their children were young, the Restons bought a little log cabin, as well, and moved it to Fiery Run in the Virginia foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
There, again, Sally could be at one with nature. Afternoons, the family would pile into their jeep, drive across the fields and up into the foothills to watch the sun set. Evenings, they would play games and read aloud - a favorite lifetime pastime. Tom Reston remembers how, as a boy, he would hurry home from school at lunchtime, as much to listen to his mother reading to him mellifluously from Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped or Jane Porter's Scottish Chiefs while he ate, as to eat the lunch itself.
Because of the Restons' virtually continuous schedule of travel, there was need of help in the family household. On a stay in Mexico - a favorite vacation retreat and a place where Scotty worked on books - they learned of a young Mexican, Frank Olguin, who became their cook, driver, man-of-all-work. It was he, under Sally's direction, who handled the tasks of everyday living. Sally's interest in and work for Mexican immigrants led to her being honored with the highest award of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, of which she was a board member. She was also a member of the board of the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College.
Although she was not a homemaker in the traditional sense of the word, her artistic eye helped furnish her homes with color and order and charm.
"She always made sure that there was a place for everything - for books and Scotty's pipe ashtrays - but nothing was ever so tidied up that you felt you couldn't put your feet up," longtime Washington and Edgartown friend Nancy Muir remembers.
She was especially fond of works of art. In the Restons' sunny Edgartown living room, an Island seascape by Thomas Cocroft decorated one wall; a rice paper scroll of water and willows from China covered an entire other wall.
The same good taste that she had in interior design was reflected in her selection of clothes. "She never got hung up about them," Jayne Ikard of Washington and Edgartown recalls, "but she always looked as if she had just stepped out of a bandbox."
But it is for her graciousness (albeit with considerable toughness behind it), and unfailing devotion to her husband that she is most remembered.
"They were a team and handed things back and forth to each other seamlessly," recalls Marian (Sulzberger) Heiskell, a close friend and former New York Times board director.
"She always backed him up. She was his memory. She would urge him to tell his stories. She had enormous intelligence and he would always talk to her about what he was doing. Theirs was a blessed partnership."
Another longtime Vineyard and Washington friend, Najeeb E. Halaby, found them the perfect counterparts for each other. "He was the dour, rumpled Scot - though with a twinkle in his eye. She was so lovely. I think she had something of the quality of a muse for him."
"I always think of Ladybird Johnson and Sally Reston in the same way - as wives who illuminated their husbands," said former U.S. Secretary of Defense and Edgartown seasonal resident Robert S. McNamara.
"Sally always put Scotty front and center," one-time Gazette intern Elsie Walker recalls. "Oh, Scotch," she would chide when he did something especially outrageous, "but if ever there was a woman behind a great man, she was it!"
Mrs. Reston is survived by her three sons and their wives: Richard and Mary Jo (Jody), of Edgartown; James Jr. and Denise Leary, of Bethesda, Md.; Thomas and Victoria Kiechel, of Washington, D.C. and five grandchildren.
Mrs. Reston will be buried beside her husband Thursday at the Leeds Church graveyard in the tiny rural village of Hume, Va., located in the valley farmland of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Vineyard Conservation Society, P.O. Box 2189, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568.
M. Anthony and Anne Fisher
Were Active in Charity Work
M. Anthony Fisher and his wife, Anne Williamee Fisher, of Chilmark and New York city, died last Friday when their chartered plane crashed in Leominster in poor weather. He was 52 and she was 41.
The Fishers were well-known philanthropists both in Manhattan and on the Vineyard, where they made their home at Blue Heron Farm overlooking a finger of the Tisbury Great Pond. They were in the final stages of a renovation project on the farmhouse and the Vineyard was their final destination last week, after they had first planned to visit Cushing Academy in Ashburnham with their daughter, Tora, a prospective student. Tora Fisher was the only person to survive the plane crash, which also killed four other people.
Mr. Fisher, who was known as Tony, was a senior partner at Fisher Brothers, a prominent real estate firm in New York city. He was co-founder and general partner of FdG Associates, a $200 million buyout firm. He was an alumnus and longtime member of the board of trustees at Cushing Academy, and was also a trustee at the Nightingale-Bamford School in New York city. He was a graduate of Bentley College in Wellesley. He was a member of the board for the Fisher House Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides homes for families of injured military personnel to stay while their loved ones are recovering. He was chairman and chief executive officer of the Intrepid Museum Foundation, which operates the docked aircraft carrier USS Intrepid. The museum was closed on Monday and Tuesday in memory of the Fishers.
On Monday this week Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, interrupted their regular daily briefings to pay tribute to the Fishers.
"The Fisher family has done, and continues to do, so much for the men and women in uniform. Many of the families of the servicemen that we visited yesterday have their families staying in Fisher Houses. They are at Bethesda; they are also at Walter Reed, and there are other locations around the country and the world. And they are funded by the Fisher Foundation. Their assistance to the military families is deeply appreciated, and our hearts go out to the families and friends of the Fisher family," Secretary Rumsfeld said.
"Like the secretary, I also want to extend my sympathies and our sympathies to the Fisher family. . . . They were great supporters of our service members. The Fisher Houses at military hospitals are a great resource for families visiting their injured or seriously ill loved ones. And we will miss Tony and Anne very much," General Myers said.
A spokesman for the Fisher House Foundation said this week that the family of rescued prisoner of war PFC Jessica Lynch is staying at a Fisher House in Germany.
Before her marriage, Mrs. Fisher worked in the fashion and magazine realm. She worked as cultural editor of Paris Passion magazine in Paris, France, as market editor of Allure magazine in New York and was the fashion director of Galleries Lafayette in New York. She served on the board of directors of the International Center of Photography and was a member of the photography committee of the Whitney Museum, both in New York city.
She was a graduate of East Catholic High School in Manchester, Conn., the Universite of Rouen in Rouen, France, and the University of Connecticut at Storrs.
Mr. Fisher first came to the Vineyard by accident in 1980 when two passengers on a sailing trip out of Nantucket became ill and the boat put in at the Vineyard. He was immediately enchanted with the Island and began coming back, first in a boat and then later to rent and eventually to buy property.
His first home was in Menemsha, which he later sold before buying Blue Heron Farm.
Tony and Anne Fisher loved the Vineyard and gave back in countless ways to a wide range of charitable organizations, including the Martha's Vineyard Hospital, Martha's Vineyard Community Services, the Agricultural Society, the Martha's Vineyard Arena and the Vineyard affordable housing project.
"I come here to forget New York," Mrs. Fisher said in a 1993 interview with the Martha's Vineyard Magazine. "It's heaven on earth here. But it's more than the house and it's more than the barn - it's really the land. It's a very special piece of property," she said.
They were avid equestrians and raised horses at Blue Heron Farm.
In the late 1990s Mr. Fisher played a leading role in saving the Martha's Vineyard Hospital, which was in the grips of a financial crisis that nearly caused its collapse. Mr. Fisher joined an emergency board of trustees that turned around the crisis and saved the hospital.
"Tony Fisher was unique. We could not have turned around the hospital without him," said William Graham, a resident of West Tisbury and Los Angeles who co-chaired the emergency board. "He had a quick financial mind and an enormous, caring heart. He was intensely loyal and endlessly generous. He had no use for prevarication or prevaricators. If he could help, he would, and he did - again and again. He never cared about getting credit. He was wonderfully fun. We are all the beneficiaries of his love for people and for Martha's Vineyard. I will miss him a lot," Mr. Graham said.
"The survival of our hospital as an independent institution rests, in large measure, to the efforts and contributions of Tony Fisher," wrote Vineyard attorney Ronald H. Rappaport in a tribute to Mr. Fisher that is published on the editorial page in today's Gazette.
In 1985 Mr. Fisher was one member of a group of people who collectively won a Tony award for producing the Broadway play Big River, an adaptation of Huckleberry Finn. In an interview with the Gazette that year, Mr. Fisher talked about his life in New York and on the Vineyard.
"In New York I work with my head. On the Vineyard I work with my hands. Here, I only go 25 or 30 miles per hour all day long," he said.
The Fishers were members of the Farm Neck Golf Club, the Martha's Vineyard Golf Club, the Martha's Vineyard Horse Council and the Martha's Vineyard Agricultural Society.
They are survived by five children, all of Manhattan: two daughters, Tora and Miasha, and three sons, William, Noah and Cole.
Mr. Fisher is also survived by his mother, Emily Landau Fisher of Manhattan; two brothers, Richard of Manhattan and Lester of Purchase, N.Y.; and two sisters, Candia Fisher of Greenwich, Conn., and Irma Fisher Mann of Boston.
Mrs. Fisher is also survived by her parents, Robert and Lois Williamee of Manchester, Conn., and her sister and brother in law, Susan and David Boggini.
A funeral service was held on Tuesday aboard the USS Intrepid in New York city. Interment was private on the Vineyard.
Memorial donations may be made to the East Catholic High School Development Fund, 115 New State Road, Manchester, Conn. 06040, and the Intrepid Museum Foundation, One Intrepid Square, West 48th street and 12th avenue, New York, N.Y. 10036.
Anna Henrietta Harding
Was Oak Bluffs Resident
Anna Henrietta Harding, a long time resident of Oak Bluffs died on Tuesday, April 8. Anne, as she preferred to be called, first came to Martha's Vineyard in 1935, brought here by her husband, Bill Harding. The Hardings had once been whalers and were Islanders since the late 1600's. As Anne remembered it, the first encounter with this clan was somewhat daunting.
"All these Harding women were looking at me like, who's this girl? Well, in the end I outlasted them all," she began noting in recent years. Anne Harding was born July 15, 1915 in Coopersburg, Penn. The family moved to Bethlehem, when her father, Wellington Hartzell, started working for Bethlehem Steel. Anne attended Bethlehem High School and also graduated from Moravian College for Women. At Moravian, she majored in business, played field hockey, was the president of the secretaries club, and a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi sorority. In her college yearbook, Anne's classmates describe her as, "a friendly, cheerful, and very talkative person." She was also given the titles of "class cut-up and instigator of fun."
While at Moravian College, Anne was set up on a blind date with a young man who attended Lehigh University, located just across the Lehigh River. Anne declined the first overture, but when the young man's fraternity brothers persisted she finally accepted. The man's name was Bill Harding and in February 2000, a few months before Bill died, he and Anne celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary.
After college, Bill went to work for Westinghouse. This was during the Depression years but Anne often referred to this time as the best in her life. "We didn't have much," she'd explain. "But what we had, we shared." It was also during this period that her two daughters, Gail and Joan, were born.
Eventually the family moved to Nutley, N.J. where they lived for the next 50 years. They also continued to spend summers on the Vineyard and in 1990 Anne and Bill moved into the family home on Pennacook Avenue full time. Each summer on the Island Anne played host to her daughter Joan, son-in-law Al Eville, and her five grandchildren. It was a large brood, but Anne, or Gram as everyone called her, managed to keep the home running smoothly.
Anne was an excellent cook and continued to host holiday dinner parties at her home well into her 80's. She was also an accomplished bridge player and was never without a deck of cards nearby.
In addition to her husband Bill, Anne is predeceased by her daughter Gail and her three brothers. She is survived by her daughter Joan and son-in-law Al of Watchung, N.J.; her five grandchildren; Beth Waller of Hamilton, N.J., Susan Balbach of Hyndman, Penn., James Eville of Readington, N.J., William Eville of Oak Bluffs, Ted Eville of Middlesex, N.J.; and seven great grandchildren. She will be remembered with love by all as a woman of character, strength, humor, and fierce loyalty to her family and friends.
A memorial service was held in Watchung at the time of her death. An additional memorial service will be held on Martha's Vineyard at a later date.
In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in her memory to Hospice of Martha's Vineyard, Box 2549, Oak Bluffs, MA 02557, or to Moravian College, 1200 Main street, Bethlehem, PA 18018.
