2023 Summer Benefit
Approximately 450 people gathered at Mike and Lisa MacKenty’s Property, on Monday, July 17, for the Sheriff’s Meadow Summer Benefit. The following lightly edited remarks were made by Board Chair Alan Rappaport and SMF President Adam Moore.
Remarks of Alan Rappaport
Hi everyone, I am Alan Rappaport, board chair of Sheriff’s Meadow. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to our annual summer benefit. Always a fun event, it kicks off the summer on the right note, always in a beautiful spot—tonight this incredible home of the MacKenty Family.
I would like to start tonight with a thank you to Mike and Lisa, our hosts. And many thanks to our Summer Benefit Committee led by Ellen Harley. Ellen, you do an amazing job, year after year, so thank you.
Thank you Mike and Lisa for opening up your property to us once again, it is incredibly beautiful and a tangible reminder of what this organization is trying to preserve.
So, first, a trivia question—show of hands: how many of you have been to/hiked a SMF property? A lot – maybe all of you.
Any words to describe them, Beautiful?
Serene? Restorative? Just great. They seem so natural. They stay that way because of some hard work by three groups. I would like to recognize all three:
First, the staff of Sheriff’s Meadow. We are so fortunate to have you work with us. You all have options—we know that—but you decided to spend this time and your careers with us.
I would like everyone to know who you are, so please raise your hand when I call your name.
Noah Froh—the fastest runner in conservation; Kristen Geagan—he lady who knows the island’s secrets; Catherine Hall—the coordinator of the summer benefit; Tom
Hallahan—keeps us organized and on target; Liz Loucks—a great botanist and the bane of invasive plants; Peter Rodegast – our expert in buildings; Joe Rogers— builder of boardwalks, keeper of trails and master of the skid steer; Nancy Tutko—Ms TrailsMV. She will never get lost!
Thanks to all of you, for the hard work last year and the harder work next year.
Second, thanks to our board. Thirty-three of us, committed, hard-working, generous with time and money—it is a great board, its fun, we learn something at every meeting and we are making a difference. Two groups deserve mention. To our new board members—George Ahl, Jesse Ausubel, Janet Baker and Chris Miller—Welcome! To Samme Thompson and Susan Crampton—welcome back! You both knew what you were
getting into and came back, thank you!
To our retiring board members, we all believe that term limits are important to healthy organization but there comes a bittersweet moment when valuable board members “term out.” I wanted to say a
special word of thanks to Peter Getsinger, Ellen Harley, Nancy Randall, and Tom
Robinson. We celebrated you at our last board meeting. You have made an incredible difference, please stay close to us!
Third is you, this group gathered here tonight. As you will hear from Adam, we have accomplished a lot since we last got together and have big plans. All of this
happens because of you—committed, engaged, thoughtful, our Sheriff’s Meadow community. Thank you for your support this year and joining us to keep this Island beautiful for future generations to enjoy.
We have a brief program tonight. Adam will share his views on what we have been able to accomplish since we were last together. I will comment briefly on goals for the year ahead and then its time to eat and drink, talk and enjoy this beautiful pastoral setting.
Now Adam, who has served as our president for the past 15 years, and we are very lucky to have him.
Many people point to the conservation of Squibnocket Pond Reservation as Adam’s most notable accomplishment and it is amazing, but it is the result of another of Adam’s great accomplishments, the proactive collaboration of the environmental community, no small task on the Vineyard.
Remarks of Adam Moore
Thank you, Alan – and a special thanks to Lil Province, Nancy Randall, and Emily Coulter for the beautiful flowers.
To all of our sponsors, thank you. We truly appreciate your support. I thank all of our ticket purchasers, our donors, our volunteers, and all of you, for supporting our Summer Benefit, and for your support throughout the year. You make our mission possible.
What is our mission? The mission of
Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation is to conserve the natural, beautiful, rural landscape and character of Martha’s Vineyard for present and future generations.
We are your local land trust. We own and hold restrictions over 3,000 acres of land across the Island.
What do we do? It’s very simple. We save land, we care for the land, and we foster a love of nature. That’s it.
And last year was a great year in all three of those areas. In May, we received an extraordinary gift. The Kohlberg family gave a
conservation restriction, on 164 acres of land at Job’s Neck in Edgartown. This forever protects a swath of the outwash plain, habitat for rare species, farmland, forestland, and more. Please join me in thanking the Kohlberg family for conserving this land.
Last week we signed a contract to purchase 7.7 acres of land in West Tisbury. This property has existing buildings that will host our first ever maintenance facility, a new office, and staff housing. And, the land links all the trails along the King’s Highway, from Fulling Mill Brook Preserve to Middle Road Sanctuary to the Steve Crampton Trail,
across the Tiasquam, and to the land of Ellen and Ed Harley. I thank Carol Kenney for working closely with us and thank all those who have contributed to this effort so far. We have raised $2.6 million toward a goal of $3 million, so we can use your help in reaching that goal.
With the support of our Chappy donors, we partnered again with the Land Bank to conserve the Ames property in the Sampson’s Hill area of Chappaquiddick.
In May, we were selected by the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital to hold a conservation restriction on 16 acres of woodland on a property that will also host an assisted living facility and workforce housing.
And we need your help on a significant land conservation effort, that is still in its quiet phase, but one that we hope to make public soon.
We are trying to conserve 167 acres of forestland, farmland, and salt marsh, on Chappaquiddick.
Conserving this land is essential to the health of Poucha Pond and of Cape Poge Bay. It is critical to scallops and conch, to ducks and egrets and herons, to pitch pines and post oaks and shadbush and sassafras. It is critical to the Wampanoag Tribe for land to hunt and fish and forage, and it is critical to our conservation legacy.
We can conserve this land only with your support. Please see me or a Board member to learn more.
We cared for the land. At Caroline Tuthill Preserve, we opened a brand-new trail, trailhead with a nice paved apron, and boardwalk through the beetlebungs.
We mowed scrub oak, and reduced the risk of wildfire at Quansoo, Pocketapaces, King Point, and the Vineyard Golf Club
frostbottom.
We got a grant for a universal access trail at Huckleberry Barrens.
We obtained an approval for the management plan for Squibnocket Pond Reservation We will open the property to the public next summer! Thank you for your support…and patience.
And we fostered a love of nature by revising, revamping, and relaunching the TrailsMV mobile app. We now have 6,000 users of TrailsMV.
We started the “Winging It” Birdwatching Club with 4H!
We partnered with the MV Family Center for the “Out and About” nature walk series!
We are hosting our first ever trail run, on October 15, out at Caroline Tuthill
Preserve.
And, through a great partnership with MV Glassworks, we launched “Treasure on the Trails: the Eben Horton Glass Float Project with MV Glassworks!” Follow the clues, find the float, and it’s yours! We’ve only hidden 25 of the floats, and we have 75 more to go, so please go out there and find one! I thank Susie and Andy Magdanz from MV Glassworks for partnering with us on this and Wil Sideman for making it happen. Let’s have a big hand for Susie and Andy and Wil.
Now, I’d like to hand it back to the godfather of the TrailsMV mobile app, Alan Rappaport.
Remarks by Alan Rappaport continued
Adam outlined, we have accomplished a lot since we were last together. And we have a lot more to do, simply put, we have three goals:
- Continued conservation of amazing properties. The island’s beauty continues to attract thousands, putting pressure on our lands, infrastructure and water. There are a number of important, sensitive properties —help us preserve them. Of special note, in the quiet period, is an extraordinary track on Chappy. Adam described it, it is historically significant, environmentally sensitive and incredibly beautiful. Please call Adam. Visit the property. We are off to a good start, but we need your help to conserve this amazing parcel.
- Second, maintaining the properties that we have conserved and linking them to each other. They are beautiful properties and need work to preserve them and then there is the goal of an island-wide trail system. Working together with the other conservation groups, the towns and the Commonwealth—just dream a bit—it is possible, a trail system that connects Aquinnah to Chappy, West Chop to Deep Bottom, Great Rock Bight to Pocketapaces—we are hard at work, know the gaps and need help completing our own Emerald Necklace.
- Finally, our third goal is to broaden our network of those interested in conservation, conserving land, helping us conserve land and enjoying the outdoors. You are all part of our community. You are all our ambassadors. Please help us extend our reach. Introduce us to your friends, join our board, volunteer for our projects.
Looking back on the progress we have made over the six decades of Sheriff’s Meadow, we all have a lot to be proud of but so much more to do.
I look forward to seeing you all at this event next summer or on the trails or hunting treasure in pursuit of one of those great glass globes.
Thanks so much for supporting us.