Chapel Talk Archive

Jack Lionette ‘23

When I was four, I moved from Boston to Martha’s Vineyard. I exchanged busy streets for long dirt paths and city parks for sandy beaches. Within a few years, I had grown from a rule-following preschooler to a long-haired, barefooted 10 year-old who found himself trespassing on a rather fancy yacht. The story of the yacht and my journey through childhood begins with one man, Eddie Stahl. Eddie is an enigma—a sweater wearing surfer, who spent the majority of his life traveling around the world, earning just enough money to buy himself a plane ticket to the next big wave. On the Vineyard, he runs a tennis camp at the Chilmark Community Center. There is no dress code, or formal instruction, or even a requirement that you wear shoes. On hot summer days you are likely to find Eddie teaching a tennis lesson in a bathing suit and a wide-brimmed straw hat. During camp, kids run wild from game to game, causing a scene that can best be described as “recess without the teachers.”

I was introduced to Eddie, and all of his wonderful idiosyncrasies, when I myself began attending the Chilmark Community Center. My father worked as a chef and my mother a waitress, and their busy schedules left me alone in Chilmark, free to fend for myself and do as I pleased. It was pretty awesome. In this unstructured time, a few of my buddies and I found Eddie, and he took us under his wing. We would help teach a tennis lesson or two, drive around in his dump-truck, and assist with a variety of odd jobs; including working on Eddie’s half built house. When my mother was at work one day, she received a grainy video sent from Eddie’s flip phone of my ten year-old self, perched upon the seat of a backhoe, grinning as it slowly rolled forward. She was mortified.

Eddie lives on a six acre property in the most remote part of the island, less a piece of land and more of a cultural experience. This spring, I took Griffin Gura to Eddie’s place, and upon our entrance into the unmarked dirt road, his jaw dropped. There was a fully intact Harley-Davidson sitting in a tree, a twenty-foot high pile of broken statues from Bali, and four abandoned cars stacked on top of each other. Over the years, Eddie’s generosity has brought together an eclectic group of people, all congregating on his property. Hippie Dave lives in a yurt, Swampy lives in the back of a truck, R-Beck lives in an abandoned eighteen-wheeler, and Eddie lives in a half-built house constructed in part by me. Griffin, of course, was right at home, eating up each inch of the property with a wide grin across his face.

“Dude, this place is so natural, there are so many sweet spots,” he said when he left.

Griffin was spot on with his analysis, I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Ultimately, what I admire most about Eddie is his seeming disregard for the “set path.” Sometimes to a fault, Eddie lives by his own rules. It is what makes him such an amazing person to be around, as he constructs a world that is so uniquely his own, that you can’t help but entertain his outlandish ideas. One summer afternoon, Eddie came up with a plan. Paddle boards in hand, he bussed down ten of the tennis campers and a few counselors in the back of his dump truck, heading towards Menemsha Beach. As we rolled into the parking lot, we stared out into the harbor, our eyes on the prize: The Banjo. The Banjo was a 55 foot yacht with two matching jet skies; the perfect location for an afternoon of fun. With a shout, we hit the water, the stronger swimmers plunging in and the younger campers following close behind, buoyed by a few of Eddie’s paddleboards. Ten minutes later, we had made it, hauling ourselves up the backside of the boat, and fanning out across the yacht. The boat was really cool. We sat for a while, marveling at our success and soaking in the sun. A few of us eyed the jet skis, but before we could make our move, the sound of sirens wailed across the bay. Two fully rigged Coast Guard boats with a number of cadets in toe, were speeding towards our position, lights flashing.

“Just stay where you are,” Eddie stated calmly. I was tweaking.

The two vessels pulled up alongside us, shouting out of a megaphone for us to exit the Banjo and turn ourselves over to the Coast Guard vessels. We quickly obliged. Sitting with the Coast Guard sailors on our way to the station, I sat with my head in my hands. What had I done, I thought. I was certainly going to jail, but for how long? I pictured my friends and me, wearing orange jumpsuits, sitting in the Dukes County House of Correction for the next twenty years. I looked over at Eddie, and he just smiled, whispering the words, “It's all good.” through a toothy grin. He was right.

The Coast Guard folks were not nearly as upset as I’d expected. They gave us a stern warning and released us into the summer afternoon. We drove back to the Chilmark General Store, grabbing pizza slices, and sharing our adventures with the whole porch. I found myself a little more subdued than the rest of my friends, still a little rattled by our capture. I had always feared stepping outside of the lines. In many instances, I think this fear has constricted my ability to take chances. Too afraid to fail and too scared to upset others, I had missed opportunities to take risks, to make mistakes and to fail.

Living on Martha’s Vineyard, it can be easy to lose your connection to the world beyond the ocean that surrounds you. It is not uncommon for high school graduates to excitedly head off-island for college, only to return home after the first term, overwhelmed by the new context. My father has coworkers who are too fearful to drive on the highway, limiting their travels to their 26 mile-wide island home. I have concluded that many islanders are stuck in their own metaphorical wasteland. For T.S. Eliot, April is the cruelest month because it promises the warmth and livelihood of a summer that never materializes. The promise of the world beyond the ocean, is like Eliot's summer. For some islanders, their fear holds them in place, ensuring that the distance is never traveled.

Of late, I have wondered if I have formed my own island at Groton. I have grown to love it here in a way I never thought I would, and as such, the idea of life beyond the Circle feels uncertain. Each moment at Groton is temporary. As a Second Former, or a Sixth Former, the date of Prize Day will always loom in the distance, unmoving. Thus, each day on the Circle is like a countdown, one day closer to your Groton career’s eventual end. For the Sixth Form, that clock now reads 20 days—less than three weeks. In these final moments, the knowledge that our time here is coming to an end makes each experience that much more meaningful. Each game of cornhole with friends, every walk to town for dinner on a Sunday afternoon, every joke cracked, every game of “chel” played, and each Sunday brunch that turns into a two hour melt, is punctuated by the fact that this will all be over soon.

As I prepare for my final days at Groton, I have found myself thinking about Eddie and the life that he has created living outside of the lines. I now recognize that it was my adventures with him that helped give me the courage to step outside of the world I knew and come to Groton. Now it is time for me to do it again. Although I do not have any plans to pirate a boat, I am excited to see where the next path leads me.

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