I was born on March 14, 1928. That’s Johnny Perry Day on WMVY radio. Karen Coffey of Pyewacket Antiques started the whole idea; she’s a hot sketch. I’ve been a tree surgeon since 1949. I started climbing trees as a kid, pruning apple trees. I like it up in the air. It’s aerodynamic.

Rich Manley and me came here to the Vineyard in ’53 from West Medford, just before the big hurricane, Carol. I just came out here cold turkey. Manley Tree Experts: we cleared wires for the telephone company and worked for the tree warden in Edgartown, and in Oak Bluffs, too. We got the deadwood out and let the sun in. Trees are trees: they give you life.

I tended bar at the old Sea View Hotel in Oak Bluffs from 1967 to 1984. Guys who came into the bar would call out “Hey, Johnny.” So my name turned into Johnny Seaview, and it stuck. I can’t stand that name Oliver, which is my middle name. I was doing tree work for Loretta Balla, the owner of the Sea View, and the wife of Dr. Ernesto Balla. She wanted to take off a shed, and I went to work for her.        

She bought the Sea View after World War II. When she found out what the taxes were, she was in tears. It had thirty-six rooms and thirty-eight more for the help, plus two cottages. I said it looks like Thirty-third and Eighth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. There were broken windows and those old green shades blowing out the windows, but anything she touched had the Midas touch.

I did all sorts of things. I painted the place from top to bottom, and put in windows, six over one. I even painted the anchors out in front. They came from the Portland, the steamer that sank in the 1898 Portland Gale on Cape Cod Bay. I lived upstairs. I was a busy little bee tending that bar.    

There were bands in the summer almost six nights a week. Sunday was the only night I could get the hell out of there and go to the races. All kinds of people came in – from actress Mia Farrow to Senator Edward Brooke. He had a party in the bar and rented it for the night. Loretta sold the Sea View in ’84 or ’85. She’s retired now.    

I used to go to the race tracks with my grandfather from the time I was five or six years old – at Havre de Grace Racetrack in Maryland. I sat on my first horse at two or three; they had pony-boy [horse-for-hire] stables in Medford. I always loved horses. In ’38 I got my jockey’s license. I raced from the time I was ten, eleven, twelve years old at Agua Caliente in Mexico; Bowie; and Thistledown in Ohio. I clock those tracks in the papers every single day. I did that ever since I was a kid. I still go to Saratoga every time I get a chance. You need a little relaxation. Life’s a gamble.

As a little boy, I worked for my Uncle Walter on a farm at ten cents an hour in Arlington. I mean, brother, you worked. The Northeast was the truck-farming capital of the nation then. We were taking out winter spinach when the Japs hit Pearl Harbor. I enlisted at fourteen and hit Scotland on my fifteenth birthday. I went to thirty-one countries before I was seventeen. I was a medic with the 82nd Airborne, Third Army. After I made buck sergeant, I did two combat jumps and was pushed out 131 times. From Fort Bragg to Sicily, Italy, and Holland.

I went back and joined the Marine Corps when I was seventeen. We did flame-throwing and worked with explosives. We got ten bucks extra. We were all little bastards.

When I was twenty years old, I got married in Jersey City to Elizabeth Ann Gilmartin. August 27, 1948 – a day that will be remembered in infamy. My brothers and sisters couldn’t believe I’d get married. They thought I’d be a bachelor forever. Some day I’m gonna turn over a new leaf.

We had three children. Daniel Michael Perry – he lives in Cocoa Beach, Florida; John Dawes Perry – he lives in West Medford; and Cheryl Ann Perry – she’s a stockbroker and lives in Somerville. My wife never came to the Vineyard. She passed away ten or twelve years ago. It’s a kick in the guts. You learn a lot of things when you lose the ones you love.    

I’ve had quite a life. I was studying that Dale Carnegie in the ’40s – how to win friends and influence people. I painted the steeple on the New England Baptist Church in Medford. In ’93, I broke the radius in my arm. One time I got hung up in a tree when a limb snapped back and smashed my face. They used the Jaws of Life to get me out, and it took 972 stitches to sew up my jaw. That was up-Island in West Tisbury near Eddie Cottle’s on Lambert’s Cove Road. You could say I was looking for the “branch manager.” You’ve got to have a sense of humor.

Now I’m the agitator. Seventy-six clicks on the rifle, that’s me. Tempus fugit. I live in Woodside Village senior citizens’ housing. Want to see my impersonations? I do Walter Brennan, John Wayne, Clark Gable. I don’t own a car, so I walk a lot. I wear cowboy hats once in a while – when I dress up – and I’m always buying flowers for the women. They’re inspiring, and it’s a way to show your appreciation for the opposite sex.    


I like to go to the Ritz – it’s a family bar – the Portuguese American Club, Offshore Ale Company. I don’t want to miss any of them. All the girls come in, and we go dancing. Want to know what the goal of life is? To relieve suffering, create beauty, and make gardens. You can take the scriptures and run them into your skull, and when you need to, you can draw interest on them. No snowflake falls in an inappropriated place. It’s there by design.