Vernon Jordan, the civil rights activist and Washington power broker who died Monday, had been a longtime summer visitor to the Vineyard, where he played golf with Presidents Clinton and Obama, celebrated his birthday every year and put his feet up on the porch while smoking a cigar.
The Island was a place he held close to his heart, friends said.
In 2016 a new science wing at the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School was named for Mr. Jordan, a gift from another longtime friend Robert Day, an Edgartown summer resident.
Mr. Day gave the school $500,000 to help build the state-of-the-art Jordan Science Center. In August that year Mr. Jordan was on hand to help cut the ribbon.
“Vernon . . . has contributed so much to everybody in his life,” Mr. Day said at the ceremony.
In rare personal remarks, Mr. Jordan recalled the segregated high school he had attended in Atlanta, Ga., which had one Bunsen burner in the chemistry lab, with a dollar budgeted for each black student and $4 for each white student.
