By Amy Jenness

Years ago, when Phil and Dorothy Bartlett began running their family farm on Nantucket, they sold their vegetables from the back of a truck on Main Street because they couldn’t imagine that people would drive all the way to Cisco to shop at their farm.

These days, the Bartletts still send a truck to Main Street during the summer, but it’s mostly to honor the tradition. Customers now prefer to drive out to the farm to avoid downtown traffic and parking hassles, as well as for the pleasant experience of shopping for food and flowers.

What a difference 46 years makes.

Phil and Dorothy have run their business since 1959, the year they were married. In that time, they have transformed it from a small family farm with the farmhouse and barn as epicenter into a sophisticated retail food business. Bartlett’s now has an acre of greenhouses, a commercial kitchen where cooks prepare gourmet food sold in their market and 125 acres of cultivated fields producing vegetables that end up in almost every Nantucket restaurant and on many island dinner tables.

And yet they still honor the family’s history on land farmed by seven generations of Bartletts and by positioning that business to continue to succeed after they are gone.

Several years ago, they moved their family home to a remote section of the farm to make way for more parking. Last year the Bartletts began building a new retail complex that will house a market and café, administrative offices, a meeting room and a commercial kitchen. The 18,000 square-foot, two story post-and-beam building will be attached to more retail greenhouse space. A large, protected outdoor area, already in use, will hold nursery plants and gardening supplies for sale. The new market should be completed by the beginning of next year.

Part of farming has always been about solving problems, but the Bartletts’ challenges have gotten more complex and changed with each decade— partly due to their ambitious expansions and partly due to the pressures of farming in a resort community. When they took over the farm from Phil’s father, Junie Bartlett, it was a subsistence farm raising vegetables and livestock; customers were just as likely to barter as they were to pay cash.

They expanded the farm to include plants and flowers in the late 1960s as a way of generating revenue in the lean spring months. As their family grew to four children, they needed to keep expanding so they could pay the bills. But about 15 years ago, the Bartletts began to notice big changes on the island. That’s when they began to think about changing the farm market on a grand scale.

“When we found out that people would come to the farm to buy things, we kept growing more and more,” Dorothy said. “Then we found out we could hire an employee profitably year-round. That was about ten to fifteen years ago. When we noticed things like customers asking for The New York Times and a cup of coffee, we thought, ‘Boy, it’s hard to see a demand and not be able to meet it. “As the [island’s] population expanded, we felt we had to expand too,” Phil added.

Now having a good year for the Bartlett’s is as much about marketing, merchandising and management skill as it is about having good weather and fertile soil. The staff jumps from 10 workers year-round to 70 in the summer, with 50 employees living at the farm. The market product line ranges from organic food and farm-grown vegetables to outdoor furniture and accessories to houseplants, perennials and bedding plants.

Last year the Nantucket Land Council successfully concluded a $6 million fundraising campaign to purchase the development rights to 104 of the Bartletts’ 200 acres. The Bartletts said they approached the Land Council after an estate planner told them their children would need to sell half the farm in order to pay their inheritance tax.

In Massachusetts, all property is assessed at its fair market value during the settlement of an estate. With a potential for 52 house lots selling at around $800,000 each on the 104 acre parcel, the estate tax would be hefty.

The conservation restriction lowers the value of the land and protects it from development. Dorothy and Phil say the $6 million they received for the restriction will be used to settle their estate when they die, thus ensuring that the family farm passes smoothly to the next generation.

With both the conservation restriction and the market groundbreaking happening in the same year, some people assumed the $6 million was used partly to fund the market construction.

“So many people didn’t get it. That money is set aside for the sole purpose of paying the government. The prospect was that our children would have to sell half the farm in order to keep it going, and that’s not what we ever wanted,” Dorothy said.

Most of the Bartletts—Dorothy, Phil, their children John, Daniel, David, and Cynthia, along with two daughters-in-law—work in the family business, from accounting to merchandising to managing the crops and keeping the equipment working. These days, Dorothy spends a lot of her time planning for the new market and helping the 60 seasonal workers who come from all over the world to integrate into farm life and island life. And Phil, during the growing months, can always be found on a tractor somewhere doing what he loves – tilling soil and planting.

“If you do what you love, you enjoy the work, and Phil is the epitome of that,” Dorothy said. “I can’t get him off his tractor. He’s the only one that doesn’t get his calls forwarded to him because he’s always out in a field somewhere.”

Bartlett’s might still be a dairy farm if the young Phil, still in junior high school at the time, hadn’t taken an interest in growing tomatoes. Mentored by another Nantucket farmer, Edward Gardner on neighboring Mount Vernon Farm, Phil discovered he loved growing things. He started growing tomatoes then to sell at Bartlett’s, and he’s still growing them today.

A passion for growing things seems to have become an island-wide obsession. The Bartletts have noticed that gardening and landscaping has gotten very sophisticated in recent years. And because of that, the island’s street vistas and yards have become a lush haven of color and texture.

“In many cases, it’s the people who come here that have driven it. They have a knowledge and sophistication, and they have taught the landscapers,” Dorothy said. “Nantucket is unique in a way. There are very few places we’ve been in the world that put as much emphasis on their window boxes and containers and on their gardens as people do here.”

Avid travelers who have visited every continent, Dorothy and Phil have developed their collective vision for their farm from influences they encountered in other places. Consumer sophistication, on both the part of the Bartletts and their customers, has also influenced the direction of the farm. There are still plenty of geraniums and vinca vine for the traditionalists, but their line of retail plants has expanded to include a vast selection of perennials, and native or exotic plants. In Bartlett’s market, shoppers can find upscale planters and gardening accessories around the corner from Black Angus beef patties and domestic or imported cheeses. Gourmet appetizers, entrees and desserts prepared in the Bartlett’s Farms kitchen line freezer shelves and wire racks.

It seems unlikely that Phil and Dorothy will give up working at the farm anytime soon; he likes farming and she likes helping customers at the market too much to retire. But they have refocused: “A few years ago, I was having some health issues and couldn’t work, and I was amazed to find out that things got done without me,” Dorothy said with a laugh. “Now I pretty much just work with the international kids.”

Their son John oversees the construction of the market, along with his other duties as CEO of the farm. Sons David and Daniel manage the crops and equipment. Their daughter Cynthia Bartlett Bopp is their bookkeeper. Their daughter-in-law Rebecca Bartlett is the controller. Their daughter-in-law Seanda Burns Bartlett is the buyer for the market. This year, after 29 years on Nantucket’s Town Finance Committee and 20 years as its chair, Phil relinquished his chairmanship of that group, although he’ll stay on the board.

“We’ve been spending most of February and March away. It’s not fair to let them do all the work while I’m gone and then come back and take over for Town Meeting,” Phil noted.

But when it comes to his public service record, he said he’s the most proud of his involvement with the Nantucket Island Land Bank. Bartlett has been a member of the county commission since it was formed 20 years ago. The Land Bank purchases and preserves open space on Nantucket using a tax on real estate purchases to provide the revenue. It has preserved 2,400 acres since its inception in 1984.

“We’ve still got some things out there. And then there’s so much property that the Land Bank owns that they haven’t even begun to open up yet. I’d like to stay on the Land Bank another five years or so.

They’ll probably have to pull me off kicking and screaming,” Bartlett said.

By Peter Brace

It’s early Sunday and your 4:45 p.m. Island Airlines flight off Nantucket - that 15 minute scoot over Nantucket Sound that gets you back into the “real world” far too quickly - is the last thing on your mind. You spend your last day on the island enjoying the beach and poking around shops for last minute purchases. But after running back to your guesthouse for a quick shower and to pack up, the fog that peeled off the island in the last morning begins to roll back in.

Before you’ve even started the rental car for the return trip, both Nantucket Memorial and Barnstable County airports have closed down to all flights. As more and more weekenders stream into the airport, the waiting areas fill with impatient travelers.

With limited seating in both departures and arrivals areas, the terminal quickly takes on the feel of rush hour in a subway station. From a passenger’s perspective, just surviving these infamous summer Sunday afternoon rush hours in order to set foot on the other side can seem like paradise compared to spending one more minute in a cramped terminal waiting for the fog to lift.

“I’m sure this [terminal] was not built to carry the kind of crowds that it’s carrying,” said David Poor, a frequent flier between his two homes in Nantucket and New York City. “What I’d prefer to see is, ideally, cut down some of the air traffic, but you’re not going to do that.”

As the terminal fills to capacity, travelers spill out onto the sidewalk entry area or gather in Hutch’s restaurant while waiting for their flights to be called. Once they’re through security screening, passengers flying to international airports must remain in the airport’s secure areas without food and restrooms. Add rain, snow, cold, wind, prolonged fogginess or any combination of these elements to the terminal’s busy traveling days and one can imagine how the chaos and frustration intensifies.

On the service side, pilots waiting to fly are crammed into tiny offices that serve as lounges, freight and baggage processing areas and airline offices all rolled into one. Ramp workers have precious little space to process and load baggage, and most importantly, all baggage must be screened by hand in these tight quarters. “With conditions as they are today, the back room conditions beyond the ticket counter are very limiting to our operation and it’s very difficult space-wise for getting luggage out, so we’re looking forward to getting more space,” said Bill McGrath, owner of Island Airlines.

Car rental companies endure the same claustrophobic operating conditions and pine away for room to just stretch their legs. “Anything has to be an improvement over this,” said Ray Conlon, owner of Windmill Auto Rentals. “This is horribly designed and the creature comforts in here are nonexistent.”

Expansion of Nantucket’s airport terminal, last enlarged and renovated in 1993, is an obvious solution to demands brought on by being the second busiest airport in New England next to Logan International Airport and satisfies requirements mandated by the Transportation Safety Administration to meet new homeland security standards prompted by the tragic terrorist events of September 11, 2001.

Luckily for the Airport Commission, 95 percent of the $25 million needed for the project will come from state and federal sources. Still, it took a lot of convincing to get Nantucket voters to buy this ticket.

“There was a lot of work needed to be done to educate the people because it was more controversial than I had expected. To me, it seemed to be self-evident that the new terminal was needed,” said Airport Commission Chairman Foley Vaughan. “We really engaged in an intense educational effort and in the long run, that was the way to go.”

Standing room only

Like many of his frequent-flying brethren, Poor has learned about the terminal’s woes partly from those who work at the car rental companies, watching passengers come off the tarmac all day long. “Travelers have no place to sit, even to exist in here on a busy day,” said Conlon at Windmill Rentals. “We work in pigeon holes here. One set of restrooms. It’s really not conducive to portraying the type of island we are to have an airport like this.”

Sitting next to Conlon, Hertz representative David Murphy shared Conlon’s daily view and made similar observations. “Down at the airlines it’s a mess,” said Murphy.

“Here, we’re all on top of each other; it’s not much good. The terminal should be an improvement no matter what they do, and I’m not too sure what they’re doing, to be truthful.”

Neither are the cabbies, whose passengers hate to wait or to be dropped off in rain and snow. To alleviate that and to provide more waiting area space outside the terminal, taxicabs will be split into two lines, one each for separated arrival and departure areas. Because the arrival-departure aspect of ground transportation is every bit of equal importance to the Airport Commission, the new terminal will include covered, curbside walkways to and from drop-off and pick-up areas.

Taxi drivers sitting recently in the existing cue at the airport waiting for fares were largely indifferent to the changes. “I hope it works out for the island,” said Kevin Madden, owner and driver for K-Man Taxi. “I have to work here. I don’t know what’s wrong with this one. Do we need a trophy airport? Maybe.” In the year 2000, Nantucket’s airport

handled in excess of 300,000 enplanements—planes landing and taking off—according to Peterson. That number dropped by a third after 9/11, but Peterson noted that enplanements are back up around 250,000 a year now. Peterson’s figures include all commercial airline activity and private flights, whose passengers bypass the main terminal.

“We can have 1,000 operations in a busy day in the summertime,” said Peterson. “Our peak enplanements in any one month was 44,400. I would say [we could] probably [reach] 10,000 a week, but you’re going to do the bulk of that on the weekend. You could probably have 5,000 in a given [weekend] day.”

At 25,380 square feet total, today’s terminal including the Continental Airlines annex building holds airline operations, passenger services, airport management offices, Hutch’s and all the other departments necessary to the running of an airport. The new terminal plan approved at Town Meeting includes a main floor with 29,000 square feet, but the total square footage of the building on all three floors is 61,000 square feet.

The basement of the new building will be used primarily to facilitate an automated baggage screening system that allows airlines to send baggage down conveyer belts from their counters, through a screening system and back up to loading areas. The 3,800 square feet of unfinished attic space above the ground floor will allow for future expansion.

Build it and they will come. Construction of the new terminal building should begin in the fall of 2006, out from the existing building to the parking lot. The annex building will be eliminated along with the general aviation-Transportation Security Administration building. Airline counters, arrival and departure areas and Hutch’s restaurant will all be relocated. A new control tower will be built in front of the terminal. None of the current parking will be lost.

The work might last into May 2008 and will pose a challenge for both the builders and for airport users and personnel.

“The only problem is that it’s going to be a neat trick to get through a construction site to get from the airplanes through the terminals to the parking lot or to public transportation,” said Conlon.

Municipal airports, especially those in resort towns, are pressured on all sides by interest groups that depend on air services for varied travel needs, but at the same time only tolerate an airport’s existence. They might abhor the very idea of expansion, instead accepting the airport’s quaint quirkiness rather than supporting growth. The oft-used phrase “if you build it, they will come” was uttered frequently on Nantucket as the airport commission began sharing its plans with the public.

At first, nobody wanted to allow the airport to get any bigger.

But as powerful as resident opposition to the terminal expansion was, that’s nothing compared to the mandates from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA). The FAA requires airports to provide adequate space and facilities for both private and commercial aircraft to take off, land and to be serviced. If an airport can no longer meet the growing need of all its users, the FAA says it must expand in line with projected use over a certain number of years.

In the latest wrinkle in airport growth, the events of 9/11 changed all modes of travel. Baggage and passenger screening became of paramount importance. The Homeland Security Department and the TSA issued edicts that all airports bring their security measures in line with the new standards.

“The primary issue is security,” said airport manager Al Peterson. “One of the things TSA is insisting on is that we are in compliance. However, we work under minimum space requirements and because of that, working conditions are not ideal. And because of that, we have to provide additional space for TSA going to automatic baggage screening. In order to do that and cut down on manpower, we need more space.”

Winning over voters

The new terminal incorporates all of the existing uses into one building that apparently a majority of Nantucket’s Town Meeting voters can live with. However, convincing Nantucketers of its needs challenged the Airport Commission as much as demands for housing the required new equipment.

“I think we designed the terminal with all of those concerns in mind,” said Vaughan, an 18-year veteran of the Airport Commission. “The first design was probably a design we would have fought for had it not been so expensive. Then we went back to the architect, and I think the design is really a good design. I think we met the spirit of the limitations that were placed on us two years ago at Town Meeting.”

In preparation for the Special Town Meeting last October 19, 2004, at which voters were asked to approve an article authorizing the Airport Commission to spend $22 million on the new terminal’s first design, the commission embarked on an ambitious public outreach effort that included 12 to 15 separate events. Monthly public information meetings tracked the progress of the terminal’s design. Members of the commission gave tours of the existing terminal at specials events, the commission set up an information table at the Nantucket Air Show last September,

the airport hosted two family days at the terminal and a Black History event was organized. And the Airport Commission created a link on the airport’s Internet site, www.ackterminalnews.com, so people could track the new terminal design effort online.

After voters defeated Article 2 at the Special Town Meeting by 319 to 183—331 votes were necessary for the requisite two-thirds majority— the outreach campaign intensified.

After the narrow miss in October, Vaughan and the commission’s efforts were rewarded at Nantucket’s regular Town Meeting in April with a resounding two-thirds voice vote in favor of the new terminal design. Vaughan credits winning voters’ eventual approval to the Airport Commission’s proactive approach to

showing the public first-hand the terminal’s needs and its evolving design. “There was a spread of information,” said Vaughan. “In other words, people saw it and talked to their friends. At the annual Town Meeting, it was almost unanimous. It should be something that is unanimous. I was very pleased with that.”

By Lyndon Dupuis

Racing around Nantucket with Mark Goldweitz to look at antique houses can take your breath away.

The Harvard graduate and Boston real estate developer talks rapidly, with sweeping gestures, about his passion for historic preservation, the restoration process and his latest passion: renovating decrepit but important Nantucket homes for profit. Goldweitz’s words tumble out as if he wants to share everything he knows at once— which would be quite a feat, given his encyclopedic knowledge of houses and the new ideas that crop up like grass between sidewalk bricks as he speaks.

Nantucketers first noticed Goldweitz three years ago when he renovated the famous Levi Starbuck house on Orange Street in an astounding five and one-half months. He and his wife Joyce have made this stunning house their summer home.

“This is all Mark,” Joyce exclaimed with a wave of her hand inside their Orange Street home. “He did this flower arrangement and several others throughout the house,” she added, pointing to a grand but casual arrangement of Casa Blanca lilies and greenery.

Since completing his Orange Street project, Goldweitz has bought, renovated and sold five historic island residences, including the well-known India House. Besides his latest plan to tackle the East Brick—one of the famous Three Bricks on Main Street—he has launched into renovations on three more island structures, including one of Nantucket’s most infamous: the Federal and Greek Revival house at 141 Main Street.

A Goldweitz restoration project.

Preservationists and historic house hunters alike despaired for years as they watched the building’s elegant yet restrained grandeur fall into what looked like irreparable decay. The house gained more than local interest when The New York Times published an article about the acrimonious divorce of its owners, Dee and Thierry de Ganay, who allowed it to deteriorate during their long and bitter divorce dispute, which stymied its sale.

Although many potential buyers inquired and some tended offers, Goldweitz, a highly sophisticated and skilled real estate businessman, successfully purchased 141 Main this winter for $3.5 million.

He wouldn’t share details, but disclosed that he had a nine-day window to complete the deal. “I really doubt that there were too many people ready to spend that kind of money for a property that needed what this one did,” Goldweitz said. Apparently his investment was a smart one, with the Main Street property reportedly under contract last month at an astounding $9 million-plus, despite being unfinished.

For most, such a project could easily be a two-to-three year process. Not for Goldweitz. Begun just months ago, the house continues to transform at an amazing rate and will, Goldweitz promises, be ready to star in a gala opening to benefit the Nantucket Preservation Trust on Thursday, August 11. Restored and furnished with fine antiques from designers and dealers in Boston, New York and Nantucket, the house will open to the public for one week in August.

Island observers expressed shock and awe over the sheer number of major projects Goldweitz has recently undertaken and the speed with which his people have accomplished the work. “I think the assumption is that these jobs usually take two or three years, and if we do it in six months, we must be cutting some corners,” Goldweitz explained. “Most jobs work a forty-hour week. We don’t. It’s just a matter of production management. If factories can go twenty-four hours a day, there is no reason we can’t be on the job twelve hours a day, seven days a week. It’s pure math.”

So much work done by Goldweitz and his team—including partner and construction supervisor David Caprice, architect Paul Curtis and interior designer Laura Harris—runs contrary to the norm on Nantucket. But his friends and colleagues soon discover that Goldweitz loves tradition in many aspects of his life, yet takes a very untraditional approach to his hobby and his business. “For example,” he explained,

“we always sand and finish the floors first, working in the parts of the house where demolition is not going on. Then, at the end of the project, they are given a final sanding and finish coat. This way, other work isn’t being held up.”

Early on, Goldweitz positioned himself well in the Nantucket preservation community by becoming a benefactor and supporter of the Nantucket Preservation Trust, whose mission matches his own.

Art historian and friend Sharon Lorenzo said, “Mark has tremendous respect for the architecture and heritage of a house while marrying the old with the new.

He is on a roll right now. He’s figured out how to give people what they need and want without their having to wait, while at the same time remaining sensitive to the architectural integrity of both the interior and exterior of a house.”

For those who question Goldweitz’s penchant for 19th-century Nantucket bathrooms paved in marble, NPT Executive Director Pat Butler isn’t complaining. “There is always controversy among the purists who don’t want anything changed in an old house, who try to keep as much of the old as possible while making it livable for today. Then there are those who just plunder and gut the whole thing,” she said. “The only people who do museum restorations are museums. I think that Mark has found a niche here that has been long ignored. He’s taken on houses that nobody else seemed to want and found a way to preserve them and sell them to those who will live in them and enjoy them.”

Goldweitz started out in Boston real estate at 23-years old by buying the Historic building where he rented an apartment.

“I was teaching real estate at Harvard Business School as a research associate in the Urban Land Development program and renting in the South End. After a couple of years, I bought the building and refinanced it with a bank, capitalizing the income from the building. Instead of paying rent, I had a five story building where the four other apartments paid one hundred percent of the expenses and I was living for nothing.”

Goldweitz successfully tackled other projects, eventually renovating more than a hundred historic properties in the Back Bay and South End of Boston. His company prospered until the real estate crash of the early 1990s, when the Bank of New England called in his loans. “It still hurts to think about this,” he said. “I ended up losing everything and having to start all over again. It wasn’t a pleasant time in my life,” he recalled.

Asked what drove him to reenter the world of real estate, Goldweitz looked surprised and answered simply, “I had to. What else was I going to do?” Among many other projects, his Garrison Square Management Company has transformed a long-neglected, seedy area of the city on the fringe of Back Bay by converting it into an attractive, upscale complex of apartments. Dubbed “St. Germain” and “ Garrison Square,” Goldweitz and his wife live there within the development in a well-appointed and spacious apartment.

Does he fear another—perhaps imminent—real estate crash? “That’s why it’s important to have a quick turn around,” he said with a laugh. “There are always going to be some ups and downs in the market. I think that Nantucket will always be sound because it is unique and the land here is finite. I think that the market I am in here and in Boston will remain quite strong over the long term.”

His full-speed ahead, laser-like focus on business seems also to define Goldweitz’s private life. “Everything I do, I do rapidly and intensely,” he said. Admitting that he never watches television and doesn’t go to movies, he insisted that the last two films he saw were “Ben Hur” and “The Robe.”

“I can’t start the day without reading my three newspapers every morning: The Boston Globe, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. I love junk mysteries, too— they’re my escape.”

“Something that has always stayed in my memory is a comment by Waldo Howland, who owned Concordia and designed my boat. He asked me if I went to the Boston symphony and did I enjoy the strings. When I replied ‘yes’ to both, he answered, ‘Have you ever seen any of the violinists playing a fiberglass violin?’” Somehow, it’s hard to imagine Mark Goldweitz appreciating a fiberglass anything.

By William Ferrall

For most who find out they have cancer, the hours and days soon after usually bring questions, confusion, depression and anger. The diagnosis, according to Charlene Thurston, Director of Hospice Care of Nantucket, starts “a period of grief and uncertainty” similar to losing a loved one.

For help in “how to sift through those questions,” in Thurston’s words, anyone on Nantucket who’s living with cancer can turn for help to a wide local network of accomplished and experienced care givers. Beyond treatment rooms and doctors’ offices, help comes from three offices within Cottage Hospital: Social Services, Community and Home Health Department, and Cottage Care, all of which provide services and support for any kind of illness. A number of other island fraternal groups, non-profit organizations and special funds enable patients to rent medical equipment for home use and travel to off-island doctors and treatment centers, as well as helping to pay for other needs. Besides medical and social services, an ongoing cancer support group organized by Hospice Care of Nantucket offers up-close, intimate support for patients facing the disease, and similar services for their family and friends.

Patients and their loved ones rarely find comfort in clinical definitions of a disease.

More often, the words of those with previous experience often help the most. These are some of the faces and words of those on Nantucket who know the constellation of possible illnesses associated with cancer, both as caregivers and as survivors.

Charlene Chadwick, RN
Oncology Nurse
Nantucket Cottage Hospital
508-228-1200

Do we have more cancer here than other places?

No, it’s just a smaller community, so it’s magnified like alcohol and drugs, only it’s cancer. The majority of patients that we see are breast cancer, colon or liver cancer. That’s the majority, but we see everything.

Patients have oncologists in Boston or New York, all over. In the summer, I have patients from [ Washington] DC, Pennsylvania, Florida. I take care of everyone. I talk to whomever the primary nurse is at their oncology center and make sure that I give the chemo exactly the way it was before. That’s the biggest upset with patients… that they want to make sure they’re getting it the same way they’ve gotten it in other places.

In the beginning, the doctors were still referring people to Mass General and Dana-Farber. There’s great communication now with Cape Cod Cancer Center and the oncologists there. I would ask a doctor, “Why are you sending your patient to Mass General when I’m here?”

But most of my people are seen through Cape Cod Cancer Center, through Dr. Casey. He does their initial visit over there—he spends a full hour with them and then every month they’re followed up over here for a 15 – 20 minute visit. I coordinate their lab work. I give them information about their chemotherapy, the side effects, who they can call if they have questions.

You become their case manager.

Exactly. I tell them about Hospice and their cancer support group. I recommend that they go to at least one Coping with Cancer group meeting because statistically people tolerate chemotherapy better if they go to a support group. I tell them about the Marla Lamb Fund [for transportation for treatment].

The whole cancer thing hasn’t changed much except that people are getting more treatments, more chemotherapy than they did before, more frequently. Newer, better drugs boost the immune system so they can get chemotherapy more frequently and kill cancer cells quicker. It has to do with quality of life. The drugs that are out there now, a patient’s quality of life is better.

I think it’s better [for patients] to tell people that they’re sick, so that they get that support from everybody. People do much better when they talk about having an illness because they find out from others, “Oh, my friend so-and-so also has it” or “My brother has it.” They make that connection.

Cancer is not a death sentence anymore. It’s a chronic illness like Lyme disease, arthritis, heart disease, diabetes. It’s what you make of it.

Peter McKay, Manager
Social Services Department
Nantucket Cottage Hospital
508-228-1200

My office provides transportation from the Marla Lamb Fund, which has been around for almost 15 years now.

We generally spend between $15,000 and $20,000 a year [on transporting patients on- and off-island]. Both the Hy-Line and the airlines are wonderful about giving discounted rates.

I’ve given advice over the years to people on ways for them to get creative from a financial point: budgeting, raising money. I’ve been able to access all sorts of organizations: the Masons, Rotary, St. Vincent, Nantucket Civic Association, Basket Makers Association. An amazing number of groups have discretionary funds, and I tap into that. Obviously cancer is one of those things that precludes someone from earning an income. In many cases it’s a temporary situation, but sometimes it’s permanent. We help to adjust the financial picture in a very aggressive way, and we do it by tapping into the very generous nature of those on Nantucket.

Brenda Johnson, Manager
Community Home Health Department
Nantucket Cottage Hospital
508-325-8300

We’re a certified home care agency, a hospital department, and we have certain criteria that we’re allowed to admit patients under that the government dictates to us. And then I’m the manager of Cottage Care, which is a private subsidiary. You can think of it as your nurse’s aide pool. We have a contract with elder services, private duty aides and homemaking.

I think our nursing staff and home care staff are pretty amazing. I work with very competent, smart and caring nurses.

We have weekly meetings where we talk about all of our patients. It’s a multi-disciplinary approach every single week. It’s a lot of collaboration, a lot of talking.

What’s your biggest challenge?

Finances. Money. We emphasize that Nantucketers like to take care of their own. A portion of the proceeds from this year’s “fun” raiser on Low Beach will go to the home healthcare department, and that’s critical for us.

Chuck Gifford, Director
Community Development &Public Relations
Nantucket Cottage Hospital
508-825-8250

You have cancer yourself, right?

Prostate. It’s been like three years since I’ve had it, [but] I have a direct connection with the cancer-related services on Nantucket. I also see a doctor at Dana-Farber.

I know a woman who’s been coming here for many years. She began her treatments off-island and wanted to be able to come to the island for the summer. With cancer, you’re never quite sure if this is your last summer. She was able to be here because the hospital was able to give her the chemotherapy. We don’t have radiation and that’s not likely to ever happen. But people can get their chemo treatments here, and that’s very nice. And we have relationships with Mass General and Dana-Farber and all the rest of them, so if things get bad, we can get people to them quickly. It’s a nice partnership.

Do we specifically fundraise for cancer here? This last campaign, no. But things that are more specific—like cancer treatment—may be a higher priority in the next campaign.

Charlene Thurston, LPN
Director, Hospice Care of Nantucket
508-825-8325

As Director of Hospice, how do you help people with cancer?

For people with cancer, or any illness, we help them have a peaceful end of life with meaning and with as much comfort as possible. We can provide education, support and service from the moment of diagnosis, at the same level as [if it were their] end of life.We might help find a nurse practitioner, a psychiatric nurse or complimentary therapies like massage. We’ve introduced the notion of helping the body and the mind to our caregivers—not just talk and education. Our volunteers will even visit their doctors with our patients if they have no one else to go with them.

Really, from the beginning of diagnosis patients feel grief from even the threat of an illness. They’ll start to imagine the future as it might have been otherwise, what abilities they might lose along the way. Those questions remain amidst any treatments, even if they’re cured. They feel the usual stages of grief: depression, anger, resignation and acceptance. We help them to sift through those questions, even if just as a sounding board. If the news is [eventually] good, we help them get their lives back together.

Today, we offer one-on-one counseling and care, our “Coping with Cancer” support group, a “Caregivers’ Connection” group for those caring for others with a long-term illness and our newest, the “Tapestries” program, for children and teens who are coping with death.

Just before her death in 2001 from cancer, my good friend Patti Martin wrote: “When the time of judgment comes, it will be no excuse to say that you were far away, or that their language was strange, or their color was different, or I did not know their names. It will be asked of you and it will be asked of me: What did you do—you, the children of abundance—what did you do to help those who were hungry, and those who were sick, and those who were fatherless, and those who were homeless? What did you do?” In the end, this dear friend really showed me the way.

Binth Rustad
Management Consultant

What’s your cancer story?

I was diagnosed in ’92 via a mammogram. My doctor was really good because he immediately sent me to see an oncologist. They put me into the whole system at Brigham and Women’s to go through a needle biopsy.

I went back for a lumpectomy, which I had chosen to do. The margins were not clean, so they thought the radiation would do it. I went to Dana-Farber and had the choice of spending the six weeks in Boston or going back to the Cape for the radiation.

I was diagnosed in February and started radiation that August. The good thing about breast cancer is the surgery is external, so you’re not going into all the internal organs. And the radiation is not hitting the throat or the intestines, so you don’t have as violent a reaction. I got through the radiation, and then eight months later they found more deposits.

So you had a complete breast removal?

When I chose radiation, it eliminated one of the options for reconstruction. The radiation damages the skin. They sent me to a plastic surgeon, but what they were speaking about was using one of the stomach muscles and saline to do a reconstruction. They told me that I might not be able to sit up if they used my stomach muscle.

If there’s a failure, then you’ve lost that muscle totally. I used the [Hospice Care’s Coping with Cancer] support group to go through the pros and cons. I decided not to do it. I wouldn’t be able to do a lot of the things I do now if I’d gone through with it.

But if you have a friend who has cancer, come in and talk. It’s about sharing and support. It’s about surviving. It’s not about dying. It’s the reaching out by people who tell you that you’re not going through it by yourself, and the amazing courage they have.

People who have come to the group are now back out working, they’re living their lives. They’re surviving. They’re in long-term remission. They’re fine for now. We don’t talk about dying in the group, unless that’s something somebody in the group needs to talk about.

Cancer is not catching. It’s amazing how many people keep it secret. I hope that people will soon not feel the need to feel ashamed or secretive. It’s okay to be private, but the support group is about how to live and how to get better and how to get through all this.

Nantucket Catering Company
Mark & Eithne Yelle, owners

Now in their fourth summer season as proprietors of Nantucket Catering Company, Mark and Eithne Yelle know the island’s food service business up close and personal. For 13 years, Mark was a chef at Le Languedoc Inn and Restaurant; Eithne ran dining room operations at several of the island’s top dining establishments.

Working as a well-tuned team, Mark orders and prepares food while Eithne sells and plans bookings. “We have a very efficient system,” Eithne assured. She noted that because of his long-time familiarity with local food purveyors, Mark can procure gourmet specialties like caviar and foie gras while keeping costs in check.

Although trained in the classic French tradition, Mark will veer from traditional fare if asked. The Yelles typically recommend classic offerings for a main meal and more trendy or creative platters of food for appetizers. Exotic foods like mini pulled pork sandwiches with tidewater slaw, potato latkes with smoked salmon and caviar or lobster spring rolls win applause from cocktail hour patrons, but Eithne finds that diners usually prefer a more substantial and classic menu. Consequently, Mark serves a lot of beef tenderloin and stripped bass when it’s in season.

Of course there are always unusual requests. “We did a vegan wedding once,” said Eithne. “The groom was a strict vegetarian and the bride had lots of food allergies. Mark had to come up with food that met certain requirements but also tasted great. He even did a tofu cheesecake.”

At yet another wedding, one of the guests lost his loafers in the sand. He apparently had too many drinks from the elaborate martini bar set up in one corner of the tent and had started swinging from the tent poles, yelling about his Guccis. Eithne was forced to reprimand him harshly to prevent him from bringing down the tent. “The catering business,” she said laughing, “is not just about food.”

Simply With Style
Kendra Lockley, owner

After two decades in the catering business, Kendra Lockley has served long enough to “have seen it all” and to have lost those panic-induced moments underscored by “Oh My God!”

“I have learned that you have to have Plan A, B and C for every event,” said Lockley, who manages the business end of catering behind a desk in her commercial kitchen, among stacks of paperwork, cooking magazines and dozens of yellow Post-it© notes with scribbled phone numbers. A Rolodex on her desktop holds 40-50 names of people she calls as needed to pass trays and help with set-up and break down at events. Each summer, she hires two or three sous chefs, mostly from culinary schools that place them in summer internships. For several years, Nantucket resident Annie Harrigan has managed the “front of the house” for Lockley and is a fixture at all of the company’s big events. Harrigan wires herself electronically to the cook tent and coordinates food prep and service timing.

In the early years of her business, Lockley cooked from her home kitchen, until her husband built a commercial facility on their property. Back then she and three or four other island caterers shared a manageable number of weddings and small dinner parties, mostly during the summer season. Lockley has since witnessed weddings and big fundraisers grow from a handful every summer to the dozens that occur almost year-round. About half of her business comes from weddings—usually she takes on about eight or nine of those, although this year she has 18 on her calendar—and the other half is cocktail parties, fundraisers and dinner parties. Lockley appreciates the mix and has risen to among the top Nantucket catering companies. She rarely advertises, preferring word of mouth instead, and she still loves to cook.

Lockley noted that Asian food is “in,” along with simple and fresh, low-carbohydrate ingredients served with simple garnishes. Although accidents are few and far between, the quick-thinking Lockley recalled that after a wedding cake once slid into her dashboard, she quickly rebuilt the top two tiers with a trimmed Pepperidge Farm cake.

Nantucket Clambake Co.
Susan Warner, owner

A 20-year veteran in the catering business, Susan Warner started with clambakes—the real kind, with smoke billowing from a pit lined with rocks and seaweed, with fresh lobsters and clams piled on and with corn and new potatoes wrapped in foil.

These days Warner stages more than clambakes, which are no longer always on a beach or in a pit. About half her business comes from catering large cocktail and dinner parties, fundraisers and weddings.

“We have these two sides,” she said. “The [classic] clambakes are relaxed and usually pretty casual. The catering side is more formal, more fine dining. It’s good – it rounds out my staff.”

Warner describes the process of preparing the clambake pit as exhausting, with a tremendous amount of work involved, although the food is simple. “The whole process of getting the fire ready takes about five hours,” she said. “That’s before I even start the food.”

Weather is always a factor, but in recent years, beach fire regulations have limited where clambakes and cookouts can legally take place. In response, Warner increasingly holds clambakes at private homes by digging a pit in the driveway or, more commonly, preparing the shellfish in a steamer in a cook tent.

Warner happily shares her expertise and knowledge of the island with clients early on in the planning stages of an event. Aside from discussions of location, budget, menu and date, Warner likes to get a handle on the mood clients want to create.

She laughs impulsively as she starts talking about this. “You can flip through a Crate and Barrel or Martha Stewart catalog and know what every bride will be asking for,” she said. “It is kind of a shame, because creativity can be crushed by these preconceived notions that the client has.”

Still she is willing to hand hold through the entire event – and even after it’s over. One of her favorite anecdotes happened early on in her career. She had catered a wedding at the ‘Sconset Casino and was loading up her vans at the end of the evening when the best man stumbled through the hedge row, inebriated. Warner called a cab and sent him back to his hotel. Soon after, she received a note from his mother, thanking her for delivering him home. “The job may not be done even when you think it is,” said Warner. “Being a full service caterer can have lots of meaning.”

Last summer, Warner hosted celebrity chef Todd English at one of her famed clambakes for a televised special, scheduled to appear on Boston’s WGBH-TV this summer.

A Taste of Nantucket
Kim Reed, owner

During a recent event, caterer Kim Reed stood behind a makeshift counter, a vase of orchids to one side, an array of platters and trays on the other. She and her staff exchanged lighthearted banter, keeping the mood in the kitchen calm and fun.

A member of her serving staff breezed by with a tray, empty except for a few crumbs and some disheveled garnish. “Did you see the one with the tight black top and the lycra pants?” she asked her fellow servers. “She looks like she is out for a night at a bar.”

“Or a night on the bar,” someone fired back. Everyone laughed.

There was little of the insane hustle-bustle or chaos that one may have expected behind the scenes of a party for 500 people. “We don’t do drama,” said Reed. “Stress doesn’t work for me.”

Reed started A Taste of Nantucket about seven years ago when she purchased a large facility with an impressive commercial kitchen. Her business has grown steadily, mostly by word of mouth, and is now well-established among leading Nantucket caterers.

Last winter, Reed and her husband, Kona, explored fish markets and Chinese food districts in Australia and New Caledonia. ”I’m always looking for hints of things that I may be able to recreate or re-work at home,” she explained. Reed has since put her travel experiences into Asian inspired appetizers including shrimp fried rice, tuna and avocado nori rolls and seared muscovy duck on crispy wontons.

Waiters at A Taste of Nantucket wear aprons with pockets deep enough to hold dirtied soup spoons, scallop shells that held seafood salad and the tiny porcelain sake cups that held lobster bisque. They’re instructed to wait for the serving piece, so that guests don’t have to search for a place to put it down.

Reed sees trends in food change as frequently and dramatically as trends in fashion. “Mini is in right now,” she said, “and also people are very health conscious. They are looking for one bite sort of things, whether it is an appetizer or a dessert.”