Carol Ruth Angell, a lifelong Vineyard summer resident, Island restaurant owner, teacher, writer and world traveler, died at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital on Feb. 25, 2020 of natural causes. She was 93.

She was born on Long Island, the daughter of longtime Oak Bluffs summer residents Harold and Ruth Heeremans, and lived the early part of her life in New York city and Seattle. Her sense of adventure and ability to adapt to different cultures and environments began early. After graduating from Mt. Holyoke College with a degree in philosophy, she was hired by the Weicker family, owners of the Squibb company, to tutor their children on their ranch in Mexico. Dating a bullfighter for a time, she acquired Spanish out of necessity by memorizing 100 words a day while riding on the ranch and accompanying the Weickers on their extensive journeys throughout Mexico.

Carol always returned to the Vineyard with her parents for the summer. She met her husband-to-be James G. Angell, a lifetime summer resident of West Chop, at an East Chop Beach Club dance. As his wife in 1959, she accompanied him with four small children to Tokyo, Japan, where Japanese culture left a strong and enduring impression on Carol’s tastes in cooking, art, clothing and aesthetics. At the end of a year, Carol and her family embarked on the completion of a circumnavigation of the globe by taking a Japanese freighter from Japan to Singapore, then through the Indian Ocean to Saudi Arabia and up through the Red Sea to Egypt and Italy.

Returning to their home in Kansas City, Carol and her husband worked as English teachers. They moved to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1966 to continue their careers. In 1969, Carol and her husband purchased what was at the time a venue for a girls’ summer camp, the so-called Big House just beyond Oak Tree Lane outside Vineyard Haven. They converted it to a summer home for a family that included five children.

n 1972, she moved to Sitges, Spain where she worked in teaching and began to develop her entrepreneurial spirit, dabbling in selling Spanish antiques and opening a bar that also sold cotton candy, which was a first for the small town of Sitges. She and her two youngest children traveled extensively throughout southern Europe. Her entrepreneurship, combined with outstanding cooking skills, showed on the Vineyard when Carol opened the Wok Out restaurant on Circuit avenue in the early 1980s. She was also the owner and creator of Angell Foods, for which she created over 20 sauces to be sold at the Fresh Pasta Co. in Northhampton, Mass.

Her deep love of, and connection to the Vineyard was her bedrock throughout her life. Through friends and family, she developed connections in nearly every town on the Island, residing at various points in Vineyard Haven, Oak Bluffs and Chilmark. She was especially active at the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club.

She is survived by her five children, Jennifer Angell, James Angell, Christopher Angell, Kimberly Angell, and Nicholas Angell.