Schooled and raised on the island, Parker Lacoste will leave in the fall to enter Roger Williams University.

12:09 PM EDT on Monday, August 9, 2004

BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer

BLOCK ISLAND -- As the ferry approaches, fog closes over the island like a lens cap, blotting out the views of Old Town and Ballard's Beach.

Slowly, the fishing boats and T-shirt shops, the wild roses and the shingled summer homes emerge from the mist.

Mainlanders have long romanticized Block Island as a place frozen in time, a community where doors remain unlocked and a secret rarely stays that way for very long.

But the island has changed and so have its children.

Journal photo / Gretchen Ertl Parker Lacoste, 18, cruising around Block Island in his Jeep, says he is sure to miss his hometown. "When you're young, it's like, 'This place is boring.' Then you start to realize it's really unique."

"Our kids are so much more worldly now," says Marlee Lacoste, the school principal. "We go away every February. When I was a kid, we didn't have as many opportunities."

Parker Lacoste is Marlee's second son, a high school senior who is about to head off to Roger Williams University. His older brother, Charlie, a sergeant in the Army, is finishing a tour of duty in Iraq.

Although he has grown up 12 miles from the mainland, Parker has hardly been island-bound. He has traveled to New York City, Washington, D.C., England and Germany. He regularly goes on road trips to visit friends in Connecticut and New Jersey.

He shows up at the ferry wearing a Red Sox baseball cap, baggy shorts and flip-flops.

Like so many teenagers, Parker is a bundle of contradictions. His Jeep Cherokee has a Bush-Cheney sticker. But on the dash sits a collection of Hunter Thompson's essays, a journalist known for his boozy, drugged-out forays into American politics. His favorite movie director is Quentin Tarantino, of Pulp Fiction fame.

The class valedictorian, Parker, who is 18, plays three varsity sports -- baseball, basketball and soccer. But then, with less than a dozen kids in each grade, anyone can sign up to play a sport.

Five years ago, 200 fans traveled by ferry to Rhode Island College to cheer the school basketball team, which won its first division championship.

"I watched as parents and friends poured out of the bleachers to congratulate the team and I thought to myself, 'This is what I love about the community of Block Island,' " Parker wrote in his college essay. " 'This community is like family to me.' "

The Block Island School is so small that kindergartners pass their teenage brothers and sisters in the hallway and the whole island turns out for graduation.

And school traditions are so deeply rooted that it is nearly impossible to change them. Third graders look forward to seventh grade, when the entire class spends a week on a sailboat, and ninth grade, when they take a field trip to Washington, D.C.

With only 900 year-round residents, islanders often wear more than one hat. The school librarian doubles as the athletic director, and it's not unusual for your best friend's mother to be your fifth-grade teacher.

In Parker's case, "My mom was my third-grade teacher."

Although he sometimes wonders what it might have been like to attend a larger high school, Parker says, "I wouldn't have traded places."

This level of intimacy has its drawbacks, however. How do you date when there are only eight students in your class?

You date girls who live off-island.

At the ferry, Parker bumps into his ex-girlfriend, Kate, and her father, who summer on the island and winter in Connecticut. They chat about college, summer jobs, the usual teenage stuff.

"People come here and like us because we're different," Parker says later. "We're not as influenced by mainstream society. Out here, people can be themselves. They're less likely to follow everyone else."

Parker has grown up surrounded by the ocean. His three-story house overlooks the clay bluffs and beyond. As a child, the island was his classroom and he grew up learning to identify birds by their songs and counting the seals who winter on the island.

On a tour of the island, Parker stops at the Southeast Lighthouse, where the yellow cliffs disappear into the fog.

"There are some little things I'm going to miss," he says. "The flashing green light of the lighthouse. The smell of the ocean. The stars at night."

Parker drives past Rodman's Hollow, a lush valley that cuts through the south end of the island until it spills into the ocean.

"In the spring," he says, "when the shadbush blooms, the whole valley turns pink and white."

When the Jeep passes Painted Rock, an island message board that changes as often as the weather, Parker slows down.

In the fall of 2002, when his friend died in a car accident on a curvy stretch of Corn Neck Road, "We all got together, every one of his friends, 30 of us, and we wrote Ian's initials and his birthday on the rock." It stayed that way until the following June, when the summer people came.

Journal photo / Gretchen Ertl Parker Lacoste, 18, works at a bicycle and car-rental business on Block Island with his freind Eddie Stover, 20, right.

On that late October day, five boys were riding in a car. The driver was trying to pass another car full of teenagers when he lost control and his car skidded, struck a utility pole and flipped over. Eighteen-year-old Ian Kortbek was killed. Parker was sitting next to him. He walked away from the accident with only minor injuries. The 17-year-old driver was sentenced on charges of driving to endanger, death resulting.

Parker doesn't say much about the accident, but both he and mother agree that the island's outpouring of support made the loss more bearable. Within days, teachers put up a bulletin board where students could share their thoughts and feelings.

And last summer, on Aug. 10, Ian's birthday, the town dedicated a skate park in his name.

On a muggy day last week, a few young boys practice moves on the steep ramps while their parents watch.

Parker stops the car and gets out. He walks over to a plain stone monument that says, "To a friend . . ." A battered skateboard with Ian's name painted in crude letters leans against the granite.

Parker isn't sure if he will wind up back on Block Island after he graduates from college. A member of the junior ROTC, he says he's thinking about a career in the Army.

But it's clear that the island exerts a certain pull.

"When you're young, it's like, 'This place is boring.' Then you start to realize it's really unique."

In his college essay, Parker wrote that on any given game day, at least 50 islanders would show up at the baseball field or the gymnasium to cheer on the team.

"Without the community, I wouldn't be the man I am today," Parker wrote. "When asked, 'What makes you different from the average Joe? What makes you so special?' I will reply, 'I grew up on Block Island, where I was raised not only by my family but by the entire community.' "