The common thing to do these days is to celebrate the widely known and often celebrated. A very few of these deserve to be exalted. What is uncommon is to mark one’s neighbors for their plain, unpretentious intelligence, generosity, and square dealing. The builder, businessman, and landlord Donald DeSorcy, who died July 17, was one of these.
When Molly and I bought The Martha’s Vineyard Times in 1991, we set out to move the business from what had been its headquarters since its founding in 1984 to more spacious and visible quarters. News reporting demands more protein, fewer calories, less cholesterol, and an atmosphere that is bland and diligent rather than spicy. The old Spaghetti Pot restaurant building off State Road, where we were, had a let’s-order-pizza aroma that impeached the standard newsroom smells of perspiration, printer’s ink, stale coffee, and cigarette smoke. Donald had just the building we needed.
He took a flyer on a young couple with a young business whose future was uncertain. He remodeled the building to suit us, priced the vast space so that we could afford it, and let us alone to do our work. The newspaper has now dwelt in what feels like its one and only home for more than 20 years. Donald, reserved, genial and wry, stopped by from time to time to chat, while making the working man’s rounds of his company’s construction projects in his tiny red pickup, a stub of a cigar stuck in the side of his mouth, mostly unlit. He was always fun to see and talk to, charming in his effortlessly direct way, and always wise, helpful, and encouraging. Subtracting one Donald DeSorcy is regrettable. Adding more like him is what we need to do.
Doug Cabral
Editor’s Note: The writer is the former editor and owner of The Martha’s Vineyard Times.
