Loading ...Naomi Turner
Candy Ma'am
My mother was from Maine, and she came from a poor family. Not destitute, but not well-to-do, and she left home at 15. She got a job working for her uncle at a candy store in West Roxbury, and that’s how she learned the business. The story was that she would send money home every week, and that money was used for her family to get indoor plumbing for the first time. Read more…
Michael Lach
Land Lover
The Cape’s environment attracts us here and inspires us to raise a family here, to retire here—I feel very grateful to be able to raise my own kids here. It’s those same elements that attract the countless visitors that drive the economy. The environment is the economy. The economy is the environment. They’re one in the same. Read more…
Ron Backer
Soil Surgeon
In 1965, I ended up going to medical school in Switzerland . . . The thing I liked best in Switzerland, other than learning the discipline of medicine, was the farmers market that we had in our town twice a week. Its main area was about half as big as Mashpee Commons, with lots of outlying stalls. Read more…
Brett Warren & John Parke
Creative Patrons
JOHN: My grandparents grew up in Craigville, and they passed the family home down to my mom, and she lives there right now . . . After high school, I left the Cape to find my career and I worked for Disney in Florida—I was a specialty restaurant chef in a resort community down there. I left Florida and went to California and spent a long time there working for Marriott Hotels—I had an 18-year career with Marriott. Read more…
Sara Jane Porter
Architect for the Ages
Jim McGuinness, the man who’s now my husband, and I were high school sweethearts. He moved in next door to me in Worcester, during a time in our lives that was difficult for both of us. We gazed at each other through our windows. We started to date, went off to college, and went our separate ways. We tried a long-distance relationship, but that didn’t last long. Read more…
Pete Stringer
Marathon Man
The first race I ever watched was the Hyannis to Marstons Mills 25k race, which is about 15 miles long. This was in the early 1950s—road races didn’t attract everyone and his brother like they do today. You’d get 20 or 25 competitors and they were all serious distance runners . . . I was probably 10 years old and I lived on Pond Street in Osterville, and there were three or four of us boys that went up and saw these guys flashing through Main Street. Read more…
Ramona Peters
Keeper of the Legends
Through archaeology, you hardly find anything left from my ancestors. But you’ll find ceramics.
It’s estimated that the Wampanoags have been here for about 12,000 years. I can only trace my lineage back to the 1590s. I grew up with my great grandmother still alive, and she was a tribal historian. I learned a lot from her about what happened before me and before her. By the time I was 16, I felt like I was 230 years old (laughs). Read more…
Amy Kukulya
Underwater Explorer
When I first came here, all I had to do was open my mouth and say “scallop,” and people would say, “You’re from New Jersey!” So I sat there and practiced: scawlop, scawlop, scawlop. Read more…
David McDermott & Yukimi Matsumoto
Glass Acts
David: See my fingers? See how they’re bent? That’s from holding a pencil. We used to have a Formica table when I was three years old, and my mom would give me a pencil, and I’d just draw on that Formica table for hours. She wouldn’t even have to come in because I’d be in a trance, just drawing, and she’d wipe it off afterward. Read more…
Scott Zeien
Marina Master
I was a corporate brat. I’ve lived in Germany, I’ve lived in Pennsylvania, I’ve lived on the south shore of Boston—my parents and I moved around as they progressed up the ladder . . . But we kept coming back to the Boston area. In fact, we always kept one boat or another here at Kingman Yacht Center. So coming back was, in a lot of ways, like coming home. Read more…
