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Martha's Vineyard first hit the international spotlight with the antics of another Kennedy. It was 30 years ago Sunday that JFK Jr.'s uncle Ted had his little mishap on Dyke's Bridge out on Chappaquiddick. Chappy, as it is known here, may be just a sandy bar of land off Edgartown, but it catapulted the Vineyard to center stage. That torpedo into the hull of the Kennedy mystique, and Ted Kennedy's shifting story about it, were long celebrated by the Annual Ted Kennedy Swim Race across the channel between Chappy and Edgartown.

Since then we've seen a host of "media events" unfold here. In the last five or six years alone, we've seen Princess Diana, multiple visitations of Bill Clinton and the QE II running aground out in the Vineyard Sound. Every summer our little island seems to stumble into the papers. The Chamber of Commerce may thrive off the notoriety, but for the rest of us, the annual media invasion has become a little old.

Gay Head resident Jeffie Butler called me Tuesday morning. "It's just crazy," she said. "It's like we're living in Vietnam or something with all these helicopters buzzing us. You can't even sleep at night with all the noise." At least, I think that's what Jeffie was saying. It was hard to hear her above the drone of helicopters over her house. "The media's turned this small town upside down over this tragedy. You don't even dare to leave the house because you'll be jumped by the media."

Gay Head is the remotest part of the island. Barren and scrubby, the town, recently officially renamed Aquinnah, is the headquarters of the island's Wampanoag Indians and various others who cherish their solitude. If you forget to buy the milk at the grocery store, you've got a 20-mile round trip to the nearest shop. It was just this remoteness that inspired Jackie Onassis to buy the old Hornblower estate in 1978. Her first years were a little rough. There were legal problems with the Wampanoags, and the beach buggy-driving goons patrolling her beach were thought to be positively un-Vineyard. Gradually, though, she worked into the island's fabric. It is a sad irony that her son's death should have occurred so close to her estate.

With her death, the estate was briefly put on the market, but then withdrawn, and in recent years her son, JFK Jr., was a frequent weekend presence. He was up here the weekend before the accident, and it is said that it was here he injured his foot, an accident which some have speculated was a contributory factor in his final accident.

Perhaps had JFK Jr. lived he might eventually have become a part of the Vineyard, but to many, the family were still outsiders. Every summer at the Harborside Hotel in Edgartown we have the Possible Dreams Auction, overseen by syndicated humorist Art Buchwald, and benefiting the island's community services. People bid jubilantly for the chance to have Carly Simon serenade them, or go sailing with old salt and longtime Edgartown resident Walter Cronkite or even catch an off-season tour of the Washington Post with owner Katherine Graham. Even new Vineyard seasonal residents, like Ted Danson, kick in generously. The Vineyard gives these celebrities a place to lead a normal life, and in return they give our disadvantaged a chance to lead a normal life. Fair deal. These people are a part of the Vineyard community.

But the Kennedys never fit this mold. John Jr. may have been a frequent visitor -- often seen having breakfast at the Aquinnah Restaurant with its panoramic views over the very spot it appears his plane went down -- yet Art Buchwald never auctioned off a morning's in-line skating down Moshup's Trail with John Jr. As third-generation summer resident Brewer Schoeller put it, "They may have had a house here, but no one ever called them Vineyarders."

This being Massachusetts, of course, the Kennedy aura still holds some cachet. Year-round resident and super-chef Susan Doherty put it to me this way, "Everybody's really sad about what happened, but people here on the Vineyard related to the Kennedys more than the Kennedys related to the Vineyard. I never heard of them socializing with any island people."

And so the latest installment in the curse of the Kennedys will only add to the notoriety of this once sleepy island. What will happen to the Kennedy estate is an open question. Somehow the Vineyard has weathered the attention of the '90s so far, but people here are ready for a little peace and quiet. Cab drivers and moped renters might prosper from the new wave of ghoulish sightseers this latest tragedy will surely bring to our island, but most people would just like to spend a summer without TV reporters shoving microphones in their faces. Yet again, the Vineyard will have cause to breathe a huge sigh of relief come Labor Day and the end of the silly season.
salon.com | July 21, 1999

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