In August 1961, for three nights, I slept next to Margaret Bourke-White. I was right there, sleeping right next to her, in a small wooden cabin on Martha's Vineyard that actually could only fit two cots and a small dresser. She had the bed on the left side of that cabin next to the trees and I slept in the bed closer to the water on the other side. The cabin was just to the right of this photo, which I took that summer.
The cabin was in Vineyard Haven on the grounds of The School of Creative Arts, a summer camp owned and managed by Kathleen Hinni, who was the dance instructor at The Chapin School in NYC.
Miss Bourke-White had Parkinson's Disease and she chose to spend quiet summers at the camp on Martha's Vineyard with her friend, Miss Hinni. A few of her photos hung in the main house's living room.
I slept in Miss Bourke-White's cabin for three nights because I was sick. The procedure was for campers who fell ill to pack up and go to stay with Miss Bourke-White, on that cabin's designated "sick bed." So, for three nights, I lay there sick as a dog and rather unaware of her presence or the magnitude of the great accomplishments of the remarkable woman who slept next to me.
I have packed away in a corner of my mind my memories of the four summers I spent at that camp. So many days were filled with a longing to go home. The sounds of faraway foghorns made so many of us feel so lonely in sometimes crowded rooms. In some ways, it seems like this all happened yesterday but in other ways it was a lifetime ago.
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