Susanna J. Sturgis   Martha's Vineyard writer and editor
writer editor born-again horse girl

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Red Helicopter

June 26, 2008

Last Saturday I was getting groceries at Reliable and I ran into my friend Barbara. I knew she was in there because I saw her black Rav4 in the teeny parking lot. There are plenty of black Rav4s on Martha's Vineyard but hers is the only one whose license plate says BABA. So she said a helicopter had just gone down off Tashmoo. She knew because she'd just been at Elaine's barn. Elaine's husband, Michael, is a pilot. He was flying home from Providence, heard the distress call, went to see if he could help out, found that local boaters were rescuing everybody from the helicopter (no one was seriously hurt), and called Elaine to reassure her that if she'd heard news of a crash it wasn't him.

Helicopters don't crash on Martha's Vineyard every day -- I'm not sure there've been any crashes in the 23 years I've lived here -- so I checked out the Martha's Vineyard Times website. Velly interesting! This is from the article in today's paper, but most of it was on the website as a news flash:

This is not the first time a helicopter has landed Mr. O'Connell [the pilot] in trouble. In July 2007, he clear-cut a portion of a one-acre lot he owns on Sandy Road to make a helicopter landing area adjacent to the one-acre lot on which he owns a house.

At the time, Mr. O'Connell was part of a group of 10 plaintiffs who had filed a lawsuit in September 2005 to block the construction of three houses on three affordable one-acre house lots on Sandy Road. Along with the issue of density, the plaintiffs had argued that the proposed residential construction would have a negative impact on protected or endangered species, including certain varieties of moths.

The Edgartown zoning officer told the Quincy-based developer he could not legally use his property as a landing site.

In July 2002, Mr. O'Connell was involved in a fatal boating accident in Edgartown Harbor. Quincy realtor William Sanderson, 62, suffered fatal abdominal injuries after being lacerated by the propellers of his friend Mr. O'Connell's 47-foot cigarette boat, called Thunder Enlightening.

This cracked me up.

A couple days later, maybe Monday, I was making the left turn off the Edgartown–West Tisbury Road onto Barnes, probably en route to the barn, when I encountered a flatbed semi making the same turn in the opposite direction. On the flatbed was a red helicopter. Hmm, thought I. Could this be the helicopter that had gone down off Tashmoo? It didn't look especially distressed, this helicopter, but I only saw it for a few seconds, and when was the last time I saw a helicopter being transported on a flatbed trailer on Martha's Vineyard? Never. Could this possibly be coincidence? I tried to ascertain what color the helicopter was that went down off Tashmoo, but no luck.

Wednesday morning I was doing my laundry at the airport laundromat. Travvy and I took our usual walk around to Animal Health Care Associates, the vet clinic, to see our friends Lisa and Kirsten. We came back by way of the tennis center, then along the airport fence.

On the other side of the fence, two guys were working on a red helicopter. Another coincidence? I was beginning to doubt it.

So this afternoon I stopped by the p.o. to pick up my mail and the paper. The article was on the front page. The helicopter was red.

Sooner or later all is revealed.

 

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