The Gazette is 45 years old this year. In its first few years of publication, we paid tribute to our World War I veterans with their passing, people who lived here for nearly a century. For this year’s Memorial Day commemoration, we developed the speech comprised of the words of World War II veterans as we said farewell this last year to the last veterans of “the greatest generation”.

We’re getting older, too. We enter a new era now, a new reality. This is us — these heroes, these neighbors, these life-long friends — this is us now. And in every sense of the word, Scott Johnson was “us”.

As we chronicle the history of the village and the longevity of its institutions, colonial Main Street and the summer homes of a hundred years ago, there is no one who could tell us tales of the “magic mile” of the fifties and sixties like Scott Johnson, who grew up here and never forgot his good fortune in doing so.

Here we have remembrances of Scott from his friends and family – our condolences to Kaye, to Liz and Mary and their families, to Scott’s sister Sue and his brother Todd, and to his many, many friends.