We don’t usually do exclamation points, but this week we make an exception.
Everywhere we’ve gone in the past week, people have only wanted to talk about one thing — Peter Simon.
They wanted to talk about his photographs.
They wanted to talk about his penchant for doing just about everything barefoot.
They wanted to talk about him as a person.
It’s difficult to know what someone’s legacy will be as he goes through his day-to-day life. It’s not something you really think about in the crush of busy schedules and deadlines. You hope to have a presence and to make a difference.
Clearly, Peter Simon touched a lot of lives in his 71 years. He was the bridge between us regular Vineyarders and the celebrities among us — photographing and mingling with hippies at a commune in Vermont or Islanders at benefits at the P.A. Club, and just as comfortable with (and familiar to) rock stars, glitterati, and presidents at the Island’s swishiest summer events.
Our Facebook post on Peter’s death drew thousands of views, more than 100 shares, and dozens of comments like this one: “The Island has lost another unique individual. Personally, I am saddened by the loss of the occasional meeting on Main Street of a sometimes barefoot Peter and friendly, ‘Hi, honey. How are ya.’”
It was about a year ago that Peter first approached us about coming back to start shooting photographs for The Times. We chatted for a while and made no firm commitments. Years ago, Peter shot photographs for both newspapers, but while The Times has always been open to freelancers working for both Island newspapers, a Gazette editor told Peter he’d have to make a choice.
Peter went for Island tradition at that time, but remained friendly with the staff of The Times.
So he came knocking again, with a pitch. He wanted to revive his Vineyard Scenes feature in The Times.
We were open to the idea, and gave him the go-ahead.
It turned out to be a nice weekly feature. Something we and our readers looked forward to seeing.
Oh, there were some quirks. Peter couldn’t quite master sharing the photographs digitally through We Transfer or Dropbox, which most of our freelancers use to get us their work. Maybe he just liked showing up at the newspaper office, where he would chat.
And there was the famous incident with Bill Murray at Lola’s in August while he was out shooting a band for his Vineyard Scenes feature. Peter told a friend at the Globe about it — indignant about the injustice of it all — and the incident went viral, Martha’s Vineyard trending on Twitter. Suddenly, in the midst of our busiest season, we were thrust into the spotlight and were in that uncomfortable position of being part of the story.
In his emails, Peter was remorseful about all the attention it brought, but he seemed to revel in the attention of it all — doing radio and TV interviews. In his heart, he knew he was right and that Murray crossed the line by confronting him and dumping that cup of water on him.
Earlier this week, his famous sister, Carly, posted an adorable black-and-white photograph of her and her younger brother. In another post, she wrote, “My dear departed brother. I love you and feel you near to all of us still. We’ve all felt you, seen you. You can’t fool us.”
Peter Simon is gone too soon, but he lives on through his photographs, our memories, and in the spirit of “One love!”