Meet Your Neighbor
Mariellen Murphy Scannell
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER
You read about islanders who are in the public eye all the time, but what do you know about your neighbors - those you see at the supermarket, the gas station, at school or just in passing on the street? Everybody has a story about how they came to be here, what they have done and how their experiences have shaped their lives and added to the fabric of Nantucket's unique character. With a slight variation in the spelling, Nantucket's Mariellen (Murphy) Scannell was named after her Irish maternal grandmother. It was only in recent years that she learned how similar their lives have been, but what is amazing is that Scannell is here at all.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent

Scannell's grandmother had her passport stolen just before she was to board the ill-fated Titanic leaving Ireland. "She literally missed the boat," said Scannell, adding that her grandmother eventually made it to America and had 11 children.

Born and raised in Newton, Mass., Scannell majored in food and nutrition at Cape Cod Community College and continued that major at Florida State University. When she returned to Newton she studied children's literature at Harvard University's night school classes, but her life took a different turn when in 1979 she moved to West Yarmouth and waitressed at the same time she started a Cape Cod chapter of Greenpeace.

Scannell became a naturalist with the Greenpeace Whale Watches chartered from Provincetown and worked for the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, which was associated with Greenpeace. It was Scannell's role to photograph the underside of humpback whales' tails, because, she explained, they are all different and similar to a human fingerprint. Her photos provided information to the center for documenting the whale population in the area.

Then she met her future husband, Steve Scannell, who was a commercial fisherman. Mariellen's parents, Tom and Rita Murphy, had honeymooned on Nantucket and she had an uncle, author Walter Carty, who summered on the island, so the couple decided to try moving here to see what fate they would receive. At first, Steve lived on a boat and worked for the Sanford Boat Company. Mariellen joined him on the island in 1980 after completing her whale work at the center and was a livein nanny for former resident Suzanne Reed. While being a nanny she also struck up an acquaintance with naturalist Jean Rioux and they began the island's Marine Mammal Conservation Program, volunteer work Scannell remained involved with for 18 years.

From 1981 to 1983, Mariellen was head waitress at the former Compass Rose restaurant at the airport run by Ginger and Rocky Rock. The Scannells were married in 1982 and in 1983 their daughter, Emily, was born. For the next three years, Mariellen fished and landscaped with her husband, then found it was time for another lifestyle change.

"In the midst of my last year of commercial fishing I was pregnant with Tom," she said of the impending birth of her second child named after her father. "It was freezing cold, and I was hauling in nets in the middle of February. That is when I said I've got to recreate myself here."

Relying on her college studies, Scannell decided to explore independent businesses including cooking and "home economics" that would fit around her family responsibilities. Consequently, she launched Scannell Domestic Services, which she renamed Mariellen's Mermaids, doing residential cleaning and, in 1985, she began being hired as a private chef primarily in charge of dinner parties. Both have become lucrative ventures she enjoys where most of her clients have become friends and in some instances are considered practically as close as family.

"I have the best customers in the universe. I am really blessed in that department. It makes it seem less like work and more like a labor of love," she said, noting that most of the furniture and art in her home were gifts from clients when she was designing and building her house.

In her free time, Scannell especially likes spending time with family, which include her Tea Cup Yorkshire Terrier, Lulu, and friends. She also enjoys cooking, photography, exchanging letters with three children she sponsors in India, writing poetry and entering contests.

Scannell is proud of her children. Emily, 24, is working for a photographer in San Francisco where this year she won first place for her portfolio in the city's Spring Show. Her son, Tom, 22, has been working as an electrician with Ryder Electric, but left the island last weekend to do a little world exploring and perhaps join his sister in California.

"This is a great place to raise kids, but I think it's important for them to spend a few years off the island and get a new perspective,"

she said. I