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Volume 40 Issue 9 • July 1 - 7, 2010
now in our 40th season

Celebrating our 40th Anniversary!
Island Memories

A Sconset Girl

Ah, 1970...seems so long ago with so many adventures and three children between then and now...the story really begins in 1968, a ‘Sconset Girl working as hostess at the Mad Hatter meets Missouri boy bartending at the Harbor House—who would expect this  summer romance to lead to “I do” at the Siasconset Chapel in July 1970.  My father, a widower, was thrilled to have the wedding on Nantucket because most of his friends that he had grown up with summered on island.  We were lucky because both of us had made friends during the previous two years with people who worked/lived on island in the summer or who came here, so it was a happy medium of guests.

I guess some of the memories are that there was no Flowers on Chestnut creations, so my dad’s friend Mary Sarg Murphy cut and arranged all the table flowers.   Nantucket Bake Shop had just started and a three-tier wedding cake with dividers had to have directions sent from the mainland. 

There was the question of leaving the chapel to drive to Sankaty Head Golf Club and the choices were a taxi, Richard Lewis “Limo,” or a horse and carriage which was iffy — a neighbor owned a Rolls Royce that he had never brought to the island but for the occasion the car arrived.  We never got a picture of it, too bad!  

The weather cooperated and the ceremony and reception went off without serious problems (my mother-in-law’s luggage never made it to the island) but, hey, it is Nantucket.  One of my husband’s favorite pieces of memorabilia is the receipt for our wedding night at the Overlook Hotel, we stayed there for their famous pancakes, the receipt is for $24.00.  Maybe getting married on Nantucket in 1970 did have its perks.   

—Daryl Acheson Westbrook, Nantucket resident, owner of Westbrook Real Estate


This season is Yesterday’s Island’s 40th year publishing on Nantucket.  We’ve seen many changes on the island in those four decades, and over the years we’ve made many changes to our newsmagazine.

As part of our anniversary celebration, we’re printing memories of the island in 1970 that have been shared with us by readers.  Jo Ann Hubbard saw our request on the Yesterday’s Island Facebook page and was the very first to respond.  We’d like to thank her for sending in her story, and we hope that it jogs some memories of others on-island 40 years ago.
If you have a memory of Nantucket Island in 1970 that you’d like to share with us and our readers, please email it to yi@nantucket.net or mail it to us at P.O. Box 626, Nantucket, MA 02554.

 

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