In a garage-top office near the Tisbury School, as a small group of tradesmen prepared their morning coffee, Alan P. Fortes reflected on a lifetime in the plumbing business.

A professional fisherman of five decades, Tom Turner has also run one of the Island’s only sawmills for the last 15 years. During that time, he has processed nearly every kind of tree that grows here, native and not, common and exotic.

David McCullough, a towering force in American literature and biography, winner of the President’s Medal of Freedom, two Pulitzer Prizes and two National Book Awards, died on August 7.

Linsey Lee first moved full-time to Martha’s Vineyard in the early 1970s, foraging for wild foods, working odd jobs and listening to tall tales from Islanders she met.

Dr. Paul Goldstein is an expert on moths and butterflies. He began his formal study of Vineyard lepidoptera at Felix Neck in 1986.

Carrie Caldwell, a fifth grade teacher at the Tisbury School, has moved around the Island 10 times in the last six months. Her next move will be her last, after she won a lottery for land on Chappaquiddick.

Growing up in New York city, Thelonious Sphere Monk 3rd did not think of his dad as a famous jazz pianist. He was just dad.

Juli Vanderhoop, Aquinnah select board member and owner of Orange Peel Bakery, moved back to the Island 20 years ago for the community, she told a group of 30 people Friday at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum.

Armed with marketing experience, seven years cultivating a community at the Oak Bluffs Library and a lifelong connection to the Vineyard, Carolina Cooney is ready to tackle her next role.

Ben Robinson was recently short-listed for the international Island Innovator Award, co-sponsored by the Clinton Global Initiative.