Nantucket inn gives stay to Hutchinsons, whose first date was on the island.
We received an interesting press release last month from Nantucket, Mass. The 16-room Century House on Nantucket set out to celebrate two milestones this year: First, it is the only inn on Nantucket with 175 seasons of continuous operation, the oldest guesthouse on the island. Second, innkeeper duo Gerry Connick and Jean Ellen Heron celebrate 25 seasons of running Century House.
To share their milestone anniversaries, the Century House introduced a Valentine's Day national anniversary contest, calling "old lovebirds," who have been married for at least 25 years, to enter to win a three-night stay on Nantucket at the Century House.
Gail and John Hutchinson, a Waxhaw couple, won the national contest, from a field of nearly 1,000 entries.
I contacted Gail and John to ask about their win, and got "the rest of the story." Our conversation just reinforces my position that Waxhaw is full of interesting people.
John Hutchinson told me he spotted the notice for the contest in USA Today online. "I never enter contests," said John, but this one struck a responsive chord, so he provided the required information.
"Our first date was taking our bicycles out on the ferry to Nantucket," John reminisced. "I had been given two free tickets on the ferry. We took with us a block of cheddar cheese, a box of Triscuits and a bag of cherries. After arriving on the island we bicycled down to the south beach and sat there enjoying our crackers and cheese and cherries."
Gail added that they met in Osterville, on Cape Cod. They knew each other from church, but the connection for them was discovering a mutual interest in Asia. Gail was studying in Hyannis at Cape Cod Community College. She had lived in Thailand. John was back from the Navy, where he had been stationed in Taiwan.
Gail and John married two years later, and all these years they still talk about Nantucket.
They had actually planned to honeymoon on Nantucket, but Gail's mom was not a fan of winter. She took up a collection within the family and sent the couple to Bermuda instead.
"This gift from Century House will be a wonderful trip down memory lane for us. It will bring us home nearly 34 years after our first date," John said.
It seems that these two "old lovebirds" have a migratory cycle that makes Canada geese look like stay-at-homes. John and Gail love living in Waxhaw. They have been residents since July 2001. I asked them where they had been prior to moving here, and got "which time?" as an answer. Their common interest in Asia was fortuitous. I learned they had lived in the Philippines for eight years, and three years in Malaysia.
Now they are headed back where it all began.
John and Gail plan to make their visit to Nantucket in June, before the tourist season begins in earnest, and the water is of a temperature fit only for natives of the Cape.
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