The Beatles topped the charts with “Yellow Submarine,” Ronald Reagan entered politics, skirts inched up, the war in Vietnam dominated the news, Betty Friedan spearheaded the National Organization for Women, and gasoline cost thirty-two cents a gallon.

Perhaps most importantly to our story, however, in the summer of 1966, Brooklyn-born Cheryl Barbara Stark hopped the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard to teach jewelry making.

Nineteen-year-old Cheryl discovered a laid-back, friendly island, a place that felt vastly different from the mainland. Though academics weren’t her strong suit, she had recently found her niche at the School of The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where she had learned silversmithing and jewelry making.

“I was a good athlete, not a scholar,” Cheryl says. “But when I found out that you didn’t need SATs or a high school diploma to get into the Museum School, I put a portfolio together and went to Boston.” Thanks to Mr. Dale, her Scarsdale high school art teacher, who had taken a course in jewelry making and taught her everything he knew, Cheryl was accepted. “I had finally found something I was good at,” she says.

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