Edward S. Redstone, a resident of Makonikey in the 1980s and 1990s, when he was the owner of the Martha’s Vineyard National Bank, now Bank of Martha’s Vineyard, a unit of the Spanish bank Santander, died December 23, at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California. He was 81.
Mr. Redstone was one of five co-founders in 1984 of The Martha’s Vineyard Times. He was its principal owner until he sold the newspaper in 1991.
He was the brother of Sumner Redstone, chairman of National Amusements and the controlling owner of media properties such as CBS and Viacom. Edward Redstone, more interested in banking than media, left his partnership with his brother in National Amusements in 1972.
Mr. Redstone was a graduate of Colgate University and Harvard Business School. He was a force in the redevelopment of Lowell, where he owned the First Bank and Trust. He sold that bank in 1986 and moved full-time to Martha’s Vineyard, in a year when both of his parents, his first wife Leila, and his daughter Ruth Ann all died.
Madeline Redstone, his wife of twenty-two years, survives him, as does his brother; children Steven and Michele Sweetwood, Lawrence and Jennifer Sweetwood, Howard and Jennifer Sweetwood, and Michael Redstone; and grandchildren Amanda, Melissa, John, Theodore, Sydney and Maxwell Sweetwood and Jesse, Alex, and Emily Redstone.
A complete obituary will follow in a future edition.
