By William Ferrall
Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

It’s of little surprise that newsman and seasonal Nantucket resident David Gregory recently played back-up hoofer to a rap song and dance by senior White House advisor Karl Rove. At this spring’s annual Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner, Gregory and a handful of others were pictured gyrating almost comfortably.

After all, as chief White House correspondent for NBC News, Gregory often navigates swirling complexities in national politics with politicians who dance around the issues. Still, despite his frequent on-air gigs—Gregory regularly fills in as guest host of NBC’s “Today Show,” and “Meet the Press with Tim Russert,” or as a panelist on other news programs in addition to his prominence in televised White House press conferences—the son of a Broadway producer and an actress said the performing arts never appealed much to him.

“I loved the theater and still do,” he recalled. “I used to hang out with my dad and go to meetings and business
lunches with directors and actors. I was always interested in the business, but it never really caught my imagination the way it did for him. “Since I was 15, this was what I wanted to do. I started watching the evening news and became enchanted with where the news would take me around the country, around the world, into politics. It immediately grabbed me.”

With a national presidential campaign about to rev up, Gregory intends to spend even more time in front of a camera by crisscrossing the country with the campaigns of leading contenders.

“This is a highly engaged and angry electorate going into the 2008 election,“ he told a sold out crowd at Nantucket’s Unitarian Church during a public talk in early July. “There’s much at stake [that will be] a huge challenge for the next president.”

Just what’s at stake might be obvious. In the recent opening of his Sunday news program, Gregory’s boss and NBC News’ Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert noted, “Iraq is front and center throughout the world.” Gregory agrees. Asked if any developments in comings months might deter public attention from the war or from the election that he plans to cover, Gregory said, “I don’t think there’s much else.”

It might have been the leading topic at most White House press conferences for Gregory and his colleagues in recent years, but maybe not until recently for the U.S. public. “I think the country was largely disengaged,” Gregory insisted when asked if the press did its job in the run-up to the war in Iraq. “It became engaged when things started to go badly, when everyone discovered that there were no ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ [when] we were not seen as liberators and [when] guerilla warfare sprung up throughout Iraq.

“A lot of people feel we didn’t do our job in the run up to the war,” Gregory acknowledged. But, he concluded, “the right questions were asked.” That record “is my legacy.”

A worthy adversary

A big part of Gregory’s legacy has been his reputation as a tough inquisitor because his interactions with President Bush and White House Press Secretaries sometimes appear more contentious than those of his fellow press corps members. When Gregory pressed Bush earlier this year on whether the president is still a credible source on terrorism, Bush chided Gregory that terrorists “are a threat to your children.”

Last fall, after Press Secretary Tony Snow characterized a Gregory question as slanted by “partisanship,” commentators at Fox News and other conservative news outlets accused Gregory and NBC of tilting to the left.

For his part, Gregory reminded that his job is “not to be an enemy but to be an adversary,” as part of the White House press corps. And criticism has been leveled at Gregory by liberals as well as by conservatives. The liberal blog Huffington Post, for example, recently suggested that President Bush had advance knowledge of a seemingly tough question by Gregory. The blog characterized Bush’s answer as seemingly “rehearsed.” As for viewers and listeners—who often easily recognize Gregory with his 6’5” stature—their inquiries run across the political spectrum but tend to be encouraging of his tough-guy persona.

“It really does depend where I am, whether it’s in Washington or along the Eastern seaboard,” explained Gregory. “People who approach me tend to be fairly anti-war or anti-Bush, so I get some ‘right ons’ and ‘keep asking the tough questions.’ Occasionally, I get people who are more critical, who say ‘you’re rude and disrespectful of the President.”

Gregory lamented that in general “we’re less civil to one another in our public discourse,” a development he blamed in part on the proliferation of Internet blogs and the public’s deep split from the current administration over the war in Iraq. “The floor has dropped out” on the public’s approval of this presidency, Gregory noted. “Many Republicans are demoralized and depressed. More of them now associate Bush with ‘basic incompetence.’

“The left is so angry with George Bush about this war in Iraq that there’s a real desire to simply get him out of power and to disengage from the Middle East.”

The worldwide public has expressed its anger toward Bush as well, with most polls showing U.S. approval at its lowest in many years. From his seat in the White House pressroom, and recently while accompanying the president on an extended trip to Eastern Europe and former Russian states, Gregory recognized that international relations have worsened under this administration and its actions in Iraq.

“America’s standing in the world has suffered a blow as the result of this war,” said Gregory. “There’s no consensus on how to fight the war on terror, between the United States and most of its traditional allies. There’s certainly a consensus about the need to confront terrorism but the parting of the ways was the Iraq War. That breech is pretty big, to the point where Bush and other leaders don’t really discuss Iraq.

“So, that’s a tremendous challenge, not only the question of how the U. S. disengages from Iraq, but what comes next? That becomes a huge challenge for the next president. George Bush wrote chapter one in the ‘war on terror’—and that was a pretty dangerous chapter.

Chapter two gets even more difficult as you think about how do we not only disengage from Iraq but [how we] continue to confront terrorism.”

Bush’s mind

Gregory demurred when asked to evaluate this White House when compared to previous administrations, and he declined to analyze the thinking of President Bush.

“That’s not really my place,” he reminded. “It’s not my role to offer those kind of judgments. There are columnist and polemicists who do that. That’s going too far a field from what I do.” He conceded, though, that the public remains highly curious about Bush’s mind.

“I’m certainly someone who has watched Bush very closely and who knows the President and knows this presidency very well. I get a lot of questions about ‘what is he like, and ‘what are they thinking right now’ and, ‘frankly, what were they thinking all along’?” A lot people are trying to decode the Bush White House.”

With the war in Iraq on the minds of most U.S. voters, Gregory speculated how the upcoming race for the White House will shape up. “The [Republican Senator John] McCain camp is in a lot of trouble, and they made a lot of mistakes,” Gregory agreed after recent news that the Arizona Senator’s campaign was in trouble. “But the Republican field is so fluid right now and is in such disorder that you can’t count him out just yet. The irony, of course, is that, in effect, George Bush has undermined McCain twice. He did it the first time when he defeated him in 2000 [in the South Carolina primary]. Because McCain is so close to Bush on the war now, Bush is coming close to defeating him again.”

On both sides of the ticket, Gregory sees the fields soon narrowing. “It will become a battle of the top two on both sides,” he said. “Right now you still have to look at Hillary [Clinton] and [Barrack] Obama on the left as ‘sucking most of the oxygen out of the room.’ Edwards has a strong operation in Iowa, but has a long way to go to really be competitive. Iowa will be telling, but you still have to look at Clinton and Obama for the Democrats.”

Gregory said earlier this month that he thought Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico would make a good running mate for Senator Clinton if she were her party’s nominee. Whatever the final mix, when compared to previous serious contenders for the White House, the current leaders include a nearly full deck of wild card candidates.

“There are questions [to which] we just don’t know the answers,” speculatedGregory. “’Is the country ready for a black president, or a female president or a Mormon president?’ Will conservatives nominate a candidate who has been married three times? All of these things stand conventional wisdom on its head.”

But conventional wisdom in this country might not apply in a time of war and its accompanying great uncertainties. “I really think that this [war] is a big issue,” said Gregory.

“War can be a great uniter but in this case it has really divided the country. There’s no question that Bush, who promised to be the ‘great uniter,’ has been anything but [that]. He had 80% approval ratings after 9/11 and it’s been all downhill since.

“George Bush, made it very clear early on, “continued Gregory, “that rather than rallying people around the war, he wanted the American people to go about their lives. He wanted to hunker down in Washington with his administration and worry about the threat to the country. He never really challenged the country to interrupt their lives, to change their lives as the war on terror went on.

“The country has had no emotional investment in the Iraq War. Coming [up] on the 5th summer of being at war, it’s not something that people feel emotionally connected to.”

On the lighter side

For Gregory’s part, his emotional connection to the profession of journalism has been certain for much of his 37 years. “This has always been a great vehicle for me to experience the world and it has never let me down,” he averred.

But it’s not always so serious as his observations here might suggest. Besides his back up dancing gig with his adversary Karl Rove, Gregory has been characterized as something of a “showman” in several profiles about him. President Bush has singled him out probably more than any other member of the White House press corps as the target of jokes, with Bush referring to him as “Stretch” or “Lil’ Stretch” for his height.

Gregory also makes regular appearances at Washington social events with his wife Beth Wilkinson, a former Justice Department attorney now in private practice and whom he met while covering the Oklahoma City trail of bomber Timothy McVeigh. Seven years ago, the two were married on Nantucket, where she was already a regular visitor. Today, they are seasonal homeowners on the island with three young children.

In another example of Gregory’s lighter side, he joked at his Nantucket lecture this summer that because he’s Jewish he was there to talk about the role of his people in the history of whaling.

Underscoring the ironic tone that seems always present in Gregory’s casual conversation, a Houston Chronicle reporter reported on her blog that when she encountered Gregory during a visit to the White House press room he showed off his new Apple iPod, playing for those nearby the Annie Lenox rock ballad “No More I Love Yous.” There was no word of a response from White House officials.

By Lyndon Dupuis
Photography By Nathan Coe

Sherburne Commons, the new Nantucket development built for older adults, still looks a little like the Stepford Wives community with its grid of newly landscaped Monopoly board houses. But given time to weather-in, the mid-island community should develop the same rich character of its occupants and blend comfortably into the Nantucket landscape.

With its charming lanes, a common building and a town green surrounded by shingled cottages, Sherburne Commons looks and feels like a little Nantucket village, because that is exactly what has been created, according to its promotional literature.

Four new homeowners who spent many years enjoying the real thing—beautiful historic Nantucket houses with all of their attendant idiosyncrasies and never-ending maintenance— are thrilled to be at Sherburne Commons.

Former New Yorkers Peter Guarino and Paul Willer own the “Wauwinet,” the largest of the three cottage models. Warm and welcoming, the two quickly announced almost in unison, “we just love being here.”

The men are known far and wide as the former owners of the House of Orange, the busy twelve-room Nantucket inn that they ran for 32 years. “Our door was always open and we entertained constantly,” said Guarino. “That is the one thing we miss, along with the hustle and bustle of the town.
But we had our Nantucket house; now we want something more up-to-date.”

Guarino impishly noted that he is a “painter and a hooker,” pointing to the hooked rugs scattered across the floors of their house. Paintings and drawings by notable Nantucket and New England artists hang on the walls along with examples of his own work.Willer’s expertly crafted Nantucket Lightship baskets march up the stairs and appear elsewhere in the house. “I have made about twenty-four hundred baskets over the years, some of which are in the Nantucket Basket Museum,” Willer said without a hint of braggadocio.

“Tonkins used to sell my baskets.” One of Nantucket’s few certified master basket makers,Willer cut all the staves and every piece of wood that he used from planks. He also made the ivory knobs
himself. When a visitor to an Artists Association exhibit asked him where he “bought his basket-making supplies,” Guarino answered for Willer, “Madam, there are basket makers and basket assemblers. Never confuse the two!”
The pair conceded that it was difficult to decide what to keep when they broke up housekeeping on Orange. They chose a tasteful collection of both Chinese Export and Imari porcelains, scrimshaw and a few Asian antiques which, along with their artwork, imbue their home with an appealing and lively personality.

It’s not a stretch of the imagination to guess that their open door policy will prevail and that their new house will also become a gathering place for friends.

Still busy Nantucket icon Anne Bradt also lives in a three-bedroom cottage, along with Nikki Pierre, her affable standard poodle. Bradt began summering on the island with her husband David and their growing family—he was a consulting engineer and Anne was a teacher specializing in early childhood education—insherburne the late 1940s while living in Westchester County, New York.

“We came to live on the island in 1976 and bought the Nantucket Bake Shop because it was one of two businesses for sale at the time,” recalled Bradt. “We didn’t know diddly squat about either baking or running a retail business.”

Obviously they got the hang of it, and it has been in the family ever since. Now run by a couple of their children, some of their 10 grandchildren also help out there. “Most of our employees have been with us for years,” said Bradt. Many seasonal visitors to Nantucket—as well as year-round residents—would agree that Nantucket just wouldn’t be Nantucket without the Bake Shop. She has been an activist for years, serving on various boards and starting Small Friends, the island day care facility for children.

“We are building the first “green” commercial building on the island,” she exclaimed proudly about the new home of Small Friends. Until recently, the Bradts enjoyed life in a large house with several acres of land and a pool. “We took stock of our lives one day and agreed that it didn’t make sense to continue trying to keep up all of that, so we signed up for one of these houses when it was all still in the planning stage.We wanted to travel without having to worry about our house.”

Unfortunately, after 65 years of marriage, David Bradt died shortly before the couple was scheduled to move in. Bradt plans to continue traveling, but has “actually been everywhere I want to go, except Angor Wat.” She hopes to go there soon.

She will, in the meantime, continue to enjoy her airy new house, reading on the back deck overlooking abutting Land Bank property, playing duplicate bridge and quilting in the winter months. Her home sports the perennially classic Nantucket blue and white scheme, accented by charming portraits of her great-great grandparents, the delicate quilts she stitches and other mementos of a long and productive life.Wood case pieces were made by her husband who built furniture as a hobby. “Every room is a variation of blue and white,” she mused, “someday I may have to ask a psychiatrist about that.” She just might if she stops long enough to do it. She can often be seen driving around the island in her little Scion.

“It’s not a hybrid but it takes about a tablespoon of gas, so I think its ‘green,’” she laughed.

Close to family

sherburnePamela Jelleme has chosen one of Sherburne’s independent living apartments, located in the gracious commons building. A native of Baltimore, Jelleme summered on Nantucket from 1954 to 1963, then bought a year-round house in Shimmo.

“When I realized I didn’t want the responsibility of a large house any more I tried moving to the Cape, buying a townhouse in Mashpee,” said Jelleme. “But it just didn’t work for me. I wasn’t close to anyone in my family.”

Four of Jelleme’s five children live on Nantucket. “I consider myself really lucky,” she said. “I signed up for Sherburne in 2005 and got the last thoughtful and caring.” Soft spoken and elegant, Jelleme is an avid reader and needleworker who calls herself a “homebody.” She looks very much at home in her country English décor: soft, cool yellow walls provide a cheerful backdrop for a traditional sofa and chairs in a vivid tree-of-life print. Beautifully coordinated curtains and handsome oriental rugs complete the scheme, looking comfortable rather than contrived.

An antique high chair— an old family piece—radiates a softly burnished glow across the room. Jelleme pointed out the back porch, which brings her great pleasure.

“When I signed on, apartment available. If it weren’t for this place, I couldn’t have come back.” She’s still adjusting to apartment living. “I am fortunate to be on the ground floor and to have this beautiful view,” averred Jelleme. “It’s fun being among the first here, but there are some growing pains.” She noted that kinks in the air-conditioning in some areas of the commons haven’t been worked out, and because the sub-contractors are located off-island there can be a two-week delay in response time. Nonetheless, “my daughter says she wishes she could live her,” said Jelleme, smiling. She gives kudos to the Sherburne staff, “who are there was no porch in the plans,” she said, “and when I was told they were going to add them, I was ecstatic!”

One might think that adjusting to a new way of living such as this would be difficult, but to the contrary, these seniors are thriving. The development allows them to remain close to family and friends while continuing to be an active part of the Nantucket community they’ve been part of for so long. For those who need or want the services, Sherburne Commons provides its residents with communal meals in a cheery dining room, wellness and fitness care, recreational activities and assisted living for impaired residents. Sherburne’s residents are not looking back with regret. Whether their life choices and personalities tend toward the exuberantly social or a quieter introspective mode, they’ve found a late-in-life solution to remaining part of the island fabric.

Sherburne Commons was initiated by a group of Nantucket volunteers and operates as a not-for-profit organization with funding help from Nantucket Community Preservation Committee and other sources. The settlement is located along South Shore Road just off Surfside Road. Current occupancy includes 26 residents, with detached cottage units still available. For more information, call 508-228-4080 or visit sherburnecommons.com.

By Jeannette Garneau
Photography By Nathan Coe

Spend a day in Nantucket’s Cisco area, and you might come away with a lasting afterglow from homegrown brews, locally grown produce and native seafood that are among the best anywhere. Yet, it’s almost like being somewhere else.

That’s the wistful note sounded by Melissa Long, one of the founders and co-owners of the combined Nantucket Vineyard, Cisco Brewers and Triple Eight Distillery. “If you want to get away from it all, “ said Long, “this is the place to come.” Spend a day in Nantucket’s Cisco area, and you might come away with a lasting afterglow from homegrown brews, locally grown produce and native seafood that are among the best anywhere.

On a recent weekday morning, the big oaken doors in front of three granite stone sheds were swung open to let in light from the sunny central courtyard. A couple of dozen tourists either stood around the Cisco beer tasting room or had grabbed stools in the new Triple Eight spirits sampling bar—where the distillery’s new Notch scotch liquor will debut this fall.

Another couple browsed bottles stacked in the Nantucket Vineyard wine tasting house. Giggles and sighs of satisfaction suggested some visitors had already lingered there for a while.

“‘Ahhh’ is what we want to hear,” said Randy Hudson. “‘Ahhh’ for enjoying the products, and‘ahhh’ for being so relaxed.”

Ooos and ahhhs

Lots of ooos and ahhhs were heard on the brewery grounds one night early this summer. That’s when Slip 14 owner-chef Jonas Baker, with help from his co-chef Timothy Thacher Renshaw created an outdoor feast of fresh, local foods—many cooked al fresco on the grill—accompanied by Cisco’s liquid gold.

A fisherman who regularly catches the daily specials for his restaurant, Baker has refined his skills at using local ingredients through stints at Nantucket’s Galley Beach, Nantucket Golf Club, Blue Fin and now Slip 14. “I like to keep the flavor of summer in the food,” said Baker, who has adopted the principles of “local” and sustainable,” meaning he cooks and assembles dishes as much as possible with replenishable seafood from area waters and produce grown on the island.

Local might be closer than one would imagine. For his July gathering, Baker traveled a few hundred feet from Cisco down Bartlett Road to Bartlett’s Farm Market. There, Baker found produce and other foodstuffs from the market’s vast offerings of fresh vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers that are picked daily from the nearby fields.

“Why buy a tomato that traveled a thousand miles when you can get one that traveled a thousand feet?” asked market co-owner John Bartlett. Even the colorful and reportedly delicious desserts served by Baker that night were created by Bartlett’s pastry chef Joanna Powley, using many ingredients from the farm and other area sources.

For the owners and devotees of the brewery and vineyard, Cisco’s new f acilities are winning new fans and creating new customers far and wide. “When they leave here after having a good time, they go home and ask for us,” said co-owner Jay Harman. Meanwhile, many of us continue to enjoy the taste of Cisco and its homegrown goods whenever possible.

By Jeannette Garneau with Evan Williams
Photography By Ron Lynch

Two years ago, when chef John Charles Berruet closed his venerable French restaurant Chanticleer in ‘Sconset on Nantucket, the restaurant’s longtime patrons worried. Over three decades, Berruet had shaped Chanticleer’s classic French cuisine and its renowned wine cellar into the crème de la crème of Nantucket dining rooms. Many feared that fine French dining was gone for good on Nantucket.

They needn’t have worried. A year after a group of longtime ‘Sconset resident exercised their option to buy back the property, they chose long time island restaurateurs Susan Handy and Jeff Worster to take over Chanticleer. The result, unveiled late this spring, is both a return to Chanticleer’s early elegance and a fresh approach, with a wider ranging menu including Chanticleercontemporary French dishes and a more relaxed brassiere-style atmosphere.

Handy said she and Worster intended from the beginning to preserve the Chanticleer’s “French restaurant essence” while making “subtle positive enhancements.”

Year-round you’ll still find the Chanticleer’s inviting interior dining room with its crisply painted, wood-paneled walls and clothcovered tables. Its clubby bar and café still draw casual diners. The rear greenhouse has been renovated and raised as a space for private functions and serves as passageway into the aromatic herb garden. Only the once-familiar carrousel horse from the patio has escaped.

Summer magic

Chanticleer puts on its best finery in summer, when lush, pastel-colored roses ramble over the many white trellises that edge the restaurant’s courtyard garden. Seated by candlelight beneath those fragrant vines, the Chanticleer staff cossets diners
with fine wines, familiar French appetizers and plats du jour including veal, duck, lamb, pork roast or a classic bouillabaisse. Beginning this month, sippers and diners will be serenaded several nights weekly with the sounds of soft jazz.Chanticleer

Walking in at night,” noted Handy, “is like walking into a secret garden. You’re transported into another place. Maybe it is the French countryside or another beautiful island. There is nothing like twilight here amidst beautiful flowers.”

Before taking the reins at Chanticleer, Handy and Worster had already built a record of successes working together in local
restaurants for the past 20 years, with Worster creating in the kitchens and Handy running things out front. After their early years at The Boarding House and then The Summer House, the two opened the popular in-town eatery Black-Eyed Susan’s in 1993, with a brief foray into take-out food at Patio J alongside the island’s defunct mini-golf course. Early on, they spent winters honing their skills off-island at high-end restaurants in Handy’s native Los Angeles.

chanticleerToday, the new-old Chanticleer has won widespread praise for its return, and a new generation of French gourmands has begun to emerge on Nantucket. Early this month, Handy and Worster invited a dozen friends and colleagues for a midsummer’s fete in their courtyard and bar. Judging by the many smiles on those guests, drawn from other Nantucket restaurants and businesses, Handy and Worster have christened a winning new reign at Chanticleer.

Guests included Caitlin Parsons and Ali Taylor from The Brotherhood, Gillian Farrell from Cambridge Street, photographer Nathan Coe, Gypsy’s Kate Coe, Alex Matthews from Lola 41, Andrew Craighead from Oran Mor, Leah Collins and Martha Toti from The Pearl, Jamie Foster of Schooners and Chris Baum chanticleerfrom The Tavern.

The Chanticleer
9 New Street, ‘Sconset
508-257-4499
www.thechanticleer.net