The Last Summer

To the editor:  It was June of 2019, and Nantucket was awakening to another summer.
I had been back on the island less than twenty-four hours when I found myself along the shoreline near the Wauwinet Inn, looking for a paddleboard to begin my summer adventure. I also had romantic ambitions, having returned with the rather optimistic notion that a display of strength, stamina, and adventurous spirit might somehow improve my prospects with a woman who had captured my attention the previous summer.

I remembered several paddleboards stored near the inn where I had worked the year before, but when I arrived, hoping to borrow one discreetly, I discovered they were still secured with a long steel cable. Nor was there a paddle to be found.

Undeterred, I walked a short distance south and spotted two more paddleboards lying unsecured on the beach, just beyond the Wauwinet, in front of an old summer house whose long lawn sloped gently toward the harbor. Conveniently, there was a paddle among them.

Kayaks and paddleboards left along the shoreline are a familiar sight on Nantucket, and I made the rather questionable assumption that these might also belong to the inn. Surely, I rationalized, no one would notice if I borrowed one for a few hours. And so my summer adventure began.

For the next two hours, I paddled along the shoreline, past the Wauwinet toward Coskata Pond and then across toward Coatue, enjoying one of those magnificent late-June afternoons that make Nantucket seem almost impossibly beautiful. There is something exhilarating about those first warm days of summer, when the island seems to awaken and the promise of another season stretches endlessly before you. I was immersed in the beauty of the afternoon, the freedom of being on the water, and the hopeful anticipation of what the summer might bring.

Eventually, as the tide began to ebb and the waves grew increasingly difficult to manage, I turned back toward shore.

As I approached the beach, I spied a tall, lanky gentleman in his late seventies standing at the water's edge, his hands planted firmly on his hips.

"I was wondering who took my wife's paddleboard," he said.

I launched into an elaborate and thoroughly unconvincing explanation about my previous employment at the Wauwinet, how employees had been permitted to use the paddleboards, and how I had mistakenly assumed this one belonged to the inn.
Eventually, I abandoned the explanation and apologized.

In my defense, such behavior was hardly characteristic of me. But Nantucket had always inspired a certain recklessness in my pursuit of summer romance and adventure.

And then, to my astonishment, he invited me up the hill to the old house. His name was Frank Phillips.

Frank's son joined us, and we settled into the rickety rocking chairs on the screened porch. We chatted for a few minutes, and as they lit Cuban cigars, I found myself increasingly curious about the house.

I asked permission to wander through its interior, and the moment I stepped inside, I knew I had entered a very special place.

It was the sort of Nantucket summer house I had dreamed of since I was fourteen, when I first began imagining what life on the island might be like. That home, and the experience that followed, would occupy my imagination for years to come.

The house was extraordinary, not because of its grandeur, but because of its authenticity. Its old woodwork, furnishings, and atmosphere seemed to belong to another generation. It was the sort of summer house one might have encountered in the 1930s or 1940s, before Nantucket's transformation into one of America's most expensive vacation destinations.

The walls were adorned with old, fading photographs of generations of summers gone by. Faces of people I would never know looked out from another time, reminders of family gatherings, youthful romances, and long summer afternoons that had slipped quietly into history.

And there was an old phonograph, its flared decorative speaker playing La Vie en Rose, the haunting French love song made famous by Édith Piaf.

The music seemed perfectly suited to the house, as though the past had never quite surrendered its hold on the present.

I returned to the screened porch, where our conversation continued.

They were curious about my life, and I found myself telling them stories of my travels, my work, and the experiences that had brought me back to Nantucket.

What I remember most vividly were their smiles. They listened with an attentiveness and warmth that seemed almost disproportionate to the circumstances of our meeting.

After all, I was a stranger who had taken a paddleboard without permission.
Yet they treated me like an old friend.

Only later did I learn something that transformed my memory of that afternoon.
Frank's wife, Jenny, had drowned the previous summer while attempting to swim to shore.

The paddleboard I had borrowed belonged to her.

For the first time in half a century, Frank and his family were spending a Nantucket summer without their beloved matriarch. Looking back, I wonder whether her passing marked not only the loss of a wife and mother, but the end of an era in their family's Nantucket history.

I subsequently learned more about the family and discovered that Frank had enjoyed a distinguished career in journalism, including serving for decades as the State House bureau chief for The Boston Globe. Reading about his wife's life, I was struck by similarities in our interests and experiences.

I have sometimes wondered what prompted such warmth and generosity toward a complete stranger, particularly under those circumstances.

Of course, I cannot know.

But I have never forgotten their smiles.

Nor have I forgotten that house.

Years later, when I wrote a Fourth of July poem imagining a summer evening in 1945, it was Frank's house that furnished the setting.

In my imagination, Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade drifted through the summer air. A woman was mourning a husband lost in the Pacific War. Fireworks illuminated Nantucket Harbor, and two lonely people found themselves dancing together, momentarily rescued from their sorrow by the tenderness of human companionship.

It was not the documented history of the house. It was the history I imagined might have unfolded there.

But isn't that part of what makes an old house meaningful?

Its walls contain more than architectural details. They hold the accumulated joys, disappointments, romances, and tragedies of people who once called it home.
This brings me to something I have noticed with growing concern during my summers on Nantucket.

I am not easily troubled by the changes that accompany the passage of time. Change, after all, is inevitable. But there is something about Nantucket's transformation that has become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Nantucket prides itself on preserving its historic character, yet I wonder how much of that character we are actually preserving. Enormous new houses rise where modest summer homes once stood. Properties are developed to their limits, and open spaces give way to ever more construction. Meanwhile, something less visible is disappearing as well: the continuity of family life, the traditions, and the accumulated memories that once gave so many of these places their meaning.

Historic houses are meticulously restored, their gardens professionally landscaped, their interiors redesigned with impeccable taste. Others are enlarged or replaced altogether. Yet amid all this investment, many houses have ceased to function as family homes in any enduring sense.

They have become commodities, investments, and short-term rentals, their worth calculated by the week rather than by the generations who gathered within them.
I understand that Nantucket has always changed. The whaling industry disappeared, old fortunes faded, and tourism eventually became the island's economic foundation. Nor do I believe that every old summer house must remain forever in the same family.
And there is nothing inherently wrong with renting a vacation home.

But something is lost when the continuity of family life gives way almost entirely to commercial considerations.

A house may retain its original windows, shingles, and floorboards while losing the very thing that made it worth preserving.

Its soul.

Perhaps every generation imagines that it has witnessed the last authentic summer.
Perhaps nostalgia is simply the price we pay for having been happy somewhere. But I wonder whether the relentless commercialization of Nantucket is gradually transforming the island from a living community into an exquisitely preserved setting for temporary experiences.

The old summer house where I met Frank Phillips eventually became a vacation rental. I do not begrudge its owners their property, nor the visitors who will undoubtedly enjoy its charms.

But I think about that June afternoon in 2019, when I borrowed a stranger's paddleboard and was welcomed into a home whose occupants were quietly enduring an unimaginable loss.

It was a house that seemed to belong to another age, a living reminder of a Nantucket where summer homes were more than beautiful properties. They were places where generations returned, where memories accumulated, and where the passing years became part of the character of the house itself.

I think about the old phonograph, the fading photographs, the screened porch, the smiles of a father and son, and a woman I never met whose life somehow became part of my own Nantucket story.

And I wonder how many such stories are disappearing behind the beautifully restored facades of this remarkable island.

Another summer will arrive. The ferries will fill, the beaches will come alive, and visitors will discover Nantucket as though no one had ever discovered it before.
But somewhere along Wauwinet Road, an old house has entered a different chapter.

Its shingles remain. Its windows still look toward the water. And its soul, one might say, has been leased by the week.

Charles Dundee