One Harvard faculty member I spoke with was dining Saturday night with a national magazine editor, an acclaimed Washington novelist and a smattering of other Vineyard A-list types, and reported that the Kennedy crash was not even alluded to. Martha's Vineyard cherishes its reputation as a place where the famous can congregate unmolested. Nobody bats an eyelid when Mike Wallace walks into Leslie's Drugstore on Main Street in Vineyard Haven, or Carly Simon cruises back and forth between her Midnight Garden shop and her fairyland Lambert's Cove estate. I've been picked up hitchhiking by James Taylor and seen Alan Dershowitz actually relaxing without a phalanx of TV crews and bright lights. The Vineyard is about as nonplussed by celebrity as anywhere can possibly be in this era of the cult of celebrity.
People take a quiet pride in their nonchalance.
This island is all about that unique Yankee brand of inverted-snobbism. Automotive magnate Ernie Boch is the butt of many a joke for his Gatsbyesque mansion on Edgartown Harbor, all lit up 365 days a year. The Hamptons this is not. There's an adage here that the Vineyard has the authors, academics and academics, while its sister island, and rival, Nantucket gets the CEOs. Stars have been retreating to the Vineyard for years.