Many Islanders cannot claim that they were born and raised on Tisbury. However, Ben Robinson and his extended family can.
His two siblings, Mr. Robinson and his children took their first breaths in Vineyard Haven, where his older sister Lilian lives.
Mr. Robinson said that my sons were both born in the same room as me in the Gazette during a wide-ranging conversation in his office overlooking Veterans Memorial Park.
Mr. Robinson is 45 years old in April and still lives in Vineyard Haven during most of the year. He is an elected member of the Tisbury Planning Board and the Marthas Vineyard Commission. He chairs the climate action task force.
He was also shortlisted for the Clinton Global Initiative’s international Island Innovator Award. This award recognizes an island resident who has created one or more solutions to island problems that have had a significant positive impact.
The 12 judges include former heads of states from the island republics Seychelles and Kiribati as well as United Nations officials, educators, and activists from the U.S.
According to Bob Johnston, a West Tisbury resident and co-sponsor of the global awards, Robinson was recommended by a group comprising fellow Vineyarders, MVC members, commissioner staffers, and Dukes County commissioners.
The shortlist was approved last week and the finalists are being determined ahead of the live-streamed award presentation on April 25.
Robinson’s environmental activism that earned him the award started in the 21st century. However, Mr. Robinson remembers being a sixth grader at Tisbury School in late 1980s when the Montreal Protocol on ozone loss was being developed.
I was writing a paper together with a friend [about the Montreal accords]He said. This was my first realization that I was on a finite planet, and that we had influence.
He stated that he has always felt that we must be more disciplined in our actions.
He was still at Tisbury School when he discovered his profession as an architect. This was fueled by an eighth-grade internship at Hutker Architects in Vineyard Haven.
I liked the design aspect of it and I liked drawing,” recalled the Syracuse University graduate of the five-year architecture program. He also worked with his father, who is a builder, to gain hands-on construction experience.
After graduating, Mr. Robinson went to sea in the summers.
As a crew member, I was on Shenandoah. . . He said, “Then When and If.” The latter vessel, a schooner was built in 1939 for Gen. George S. Patton.
Other boats would follow. I’ve always loved sailing and wanted to travel so I used sailing to travel, Mr. Robinson explained.
Around 2001, he met Elisabeth Ross Carnie, a fellow traveler who would become his life partner.
The couple’s meeting echoes the one between Mr. Robinson’s parents, Jeff, originally from New York, & Ingrid who was Finnish. The couple had met at sea. They lived aboard an Asian ship before they started their relationship.
They were also keen competitors in sailing, a trait that continues to be passed on to their grandchildren and children. Ingrid Robinson, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2001, is honored with a prize for the annual Pat West Gaff Rig Race at Vineyard Haven. Her family members have won the prize more than once in their schooner Phra Luang.
While they made the Vineyard their home the Robinsons were quick to introduce their children the rest of the world.
After Ben’s first month of kindergarten at Tisbury School in September, the couple moved the family to Sri Lanka and then Thailand. Jeff Robinson spent two-years building Phra luang, while Jeff processed refugee requests for U.S. Embassy Bangkok.
Because his father was employed, the children were able to attend the international school in Bangkok. Mr. Robinson still remembers it as being remarkably well-appointed.
He said that in the first grade, we had our science lab.
He returned to the Tisbury School for second through eighth grades. Mr. Robinson then went on to the regional school, graduating in 1995.
A few years later, Ms. Carnie met Ms. Carnie and they traveled through Europe, working on boats. They returned to the U.S. where she attended Columbia Universitys Teachers College and he worked as an engineer.
The couple, who lived in Manhattan, returned to Tisbury after the birth of Runar Finn, their first son. Runar Finn is now 15 years old and was named after his Finnish great grandfather, who fought in World War II on skis.
When they were expecting their second child, Odin, aged 12, Ms. Carnie was ready to leave New York for the Vineyard. Mr. Robinson was also ready.
Like many families, they have had to move twice a year between homes. They have lived in several rental homes in Tisbury. Most recently, they settled in to a revolving winter tenant at a historic home near Vineyard Haven library.
The family moves to a cabin in summer on the grounds at Barn House in Chilmark. This century-old summer colony is located across from Lucy Vincent Beach. Ms. Carnie has been cooking communal meals for residents there for the past 10 years.
Robinson said that the ethos we lived by really made this place resonate with us. We have really lucked in the Vineyard shuffle.
He is open to admitting the tension between his career as an architect, which involves almost exclusively second homes, and his belief that all development harms nature.
He said that he does struggle with it sometimes.
He believes that building projects can be designed to reduce their environmental impact. His belief led to him attending Tisbury planning boards meetings until he was appointed as an alternate member and then elected to the board.
I have always wanted to be in Tisbury [but]He said that I didn’t realize I wanted to be politically involved.
The thing that really triggered my thinking was seeing projects that I felt had value. Around 2014, I began to pay more attention.
In 2016, Mr. Robinson was appointed to the MVC for the first time by the Tisbury Select Board. The board renewed his one year appointment several times before their relationship began to fray due to his obsessive focus in environmental issues.
The board really didn’t like the MVC I was doing the last year I had been appointed,” stated Mr. Robinson. He ran for the town at-large seat in 2020 and was elected.
They thought that I was answerable to the appointing board because they were their board.
While acknowledging the difficult nature of the fight to reduce greenhouse gasses, Robinson points out with pride some of the MVCs achievements in his recent leadership of the climate task force.
Eversource is running a fifth electric cable to the Island as a result of task forces’ work that showed that the island’s demand was higher than what the utility company had predicted, he stated. The Eversource diesel generators at the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road will be removed by 2025.
The task force works with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a study of Vineyard’s supply chain. This is aimed at improving the island’s resilience.
Mr. Robinson’s activism also shows in the next generation. Both of his sons are involved in the student campaign to ban single-use plastic containers on the Island.
Robinson said that he didn’t lead the boys to this campaign; they found it on their terms.
He said that kids can become political and it’s easy to believe their parents are using the children.
I try to take a step back when they get involved in such things.
