Leaving on the Porch Light - by John Budris
John Budris wrote this moving essay which appeared in the program notes for the original dedication ceremony for the Memorial. It was published in Vineyard Style Magazine, Summer 2001.
Leaving on the Porch Light
The idea seemed so simple: One more night to leave the porch light on for Ricky. That's how Rick Harrington describes his inspiration to transform the tired Edgartown Lighthouse into a memorial for children taken from us too young, too early.
"Throughout human history lighthouses brought us home, gave us hope, pointed the way to shelter," says Rick. His own need to find solace after the death of his teenage son Ricky in a 1995 automobile accident brought Rick Harrington home to such a lighthouse.
"I had a picture on my desk, fishing with my boys near the Edgartown Lighthouse," says Rick, who was born and raised on the Island, but now resides near Boston. "In my grief somehow I kept encountering images of lighthouses in odd places - on subway advertising signs, embroidered on the jacket sleeve of some stranger sitting next to me, and this light went on in my mind."
Engaging the Martha's Vineyard Historical Society, steward of the lighthouse, Harrington proposed the idea of restoring the landmark as a children's memorial. He found immediate support and open hearts.
Craig Dripps, a regional high school math teacher and society board member, pressed on with the $75,000 restoration fund effort, and along with Executive Director Matthew Stackpole, helped shepherd the project through the delicate maze of local and federal regulators. Donations began to trickle in as word moved quietly through the community, both on and off the Island. Geoffrey White, a West Tisbury architect, offered his services. Edgartown mason Dudley Levick began working on the site this spring, rebuilding the old granite and concrete foundation with freshly quarried stones.
By today's dedication - nearly six years after the death of young Ricky Harrington, more than a hundred smaller cobblestones engraved with the names of deceased children will keep a permanent vigil around the lighthouse. Their names come from the Vineyard and from afar. They are lost to cancer, to the sea. They are taken from us by accident, by suicide, by illness. And they are all too young and left much too soon.
On most fair weather days on the Vineyard, pilot Dick Sherman takes tourists up on his Korean War vintage plane "Warbird" for a gulls-eye view of the Island. As they pass over the Edgartown Lighthouse he remembers his son, now memorialized with a cobblestone.
Beyond a place to comfort his personal sorrow, Rick Harrington hoped to create a shelter for all parents who have lost their children and find for them a haven near the sea where time may turn around. And he succeeded.
Today and for all time to come, friends and strangers alike will walk the perimeter of that old lighthouse. Their eyes will meet, and in that unspoken look only a parent who has lost a child knows, a bridge will be built into a secret place. And their children will know - wherever they are - mom and dad are still waiting up for them and the porch light is on.
©John Budris
2001