My first time here was in the ’50s. We were guests of Frank and Harriet Sayre. My father was a minister. Frank Sayre was dean of the Washington Cathedral, and my father was a canon there, and they were friends. Harriet Sayre was one of the founders of Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, so it’s a small world.

In the late 1950s my father became the archdeacon of the Episcopal Church in Boston and was the first African American to be elected bishop in the Episcopal Church. In the early ’60s we began to come here all summer. We stayed up in Chilmark because my father was assigned to the Community Center, which was a church all summer, at least on Sundays. We stayed up-Island at Orchard House.

He did that for several summers, and after that stopped, we rented for a couple of summers in Vineyard Haven. Then, in the late ’60s, they bought the house that I now have.

A fairly substantial African American community comes here for the summer, and we would come and hang with all our friends, mainly in Oak Bluffs. You end up making friends you’ll have your whole life. A lot of people, especially at my age, their families still come. People come when they’re children and in high school, and then in college they find other things to do. Then they have families, and come back with their kids.

I know the people that I grew up with on the Island far better than I ever knew people in high school and junior high, because my parents lived out in Newton, and even though there was a black population in Newton, the social life, of course, was completely separate.

After I got out of college, I never came again for the whole summer because I was always working. But after I had children, my children came down here all summer every summer until they got out of high school. They stayed with my parents, which was great. I have to admit it gives me a whole other picture, now that I’m a grandparent, of what grandparents are capable of.

My parents moved here year-round in the late ’80s. My father began to fail, and couldn’t really get around without help. My mother was almost as old, so she couldn’t continue to take care of him. So he spent his last year in the Henrietta Brewer House [in Vineyard Haven]. In the years prior to that, visiting nurses from Community Services came to care for him, so I got to know several of them.

When my mother died suddenly, it surprised everybody. She had moved a lot with my father, and after they moved to the Vineyard, she said, “I’m never moving again.” Outside of going to the hospital and to Boston, she never left the Island again.

Last year, the organization I was working with in Washington was thinking about merging with another organization. No one knew what the future was going to be. And this position opened up, and I said, “Well I guess I could send a resume here.” And [Martha’s Vineyard Community Services] went through a search, and they hired somebody else who didn’t want to come here because of the cost of living. They called me in October and asked me if I was still interested. I really hadn’t intended at this point in my life to leave Washington. But I went through the interview process and got the job. It’s one of the best decisions I have ever made.

I moved a lot over the years, and this was the one place that was actually stable, so it was just coming back home.

The first Possible Dreams Auction was held in 1979 to raise money for unfunded care at Martha’s Vineyard Community Services. The Right Reverend and Mrs. John Burgess donated a dinner for four at the Burgess home. The item sold for $10, which wasn’t an unusual amount for that first auction. In 2006, the Possible Dreams Auction – which annually raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for Community Services – will be held on Monday, August 7, at the Harborside Inn in Edgartown.