John Murphy has been coming to the Cape during the summer for a quarter-century. It's where the retiring chairman and director of Oppenheimer Funds Inc. has been able to "Just be who I am, not what I am." For many years, Murphy would hardly ever leave his little village in Cotuit, intent to decompress from the high-wire world of big finance. But as he approaches retirement and expects to spend more time here, he's realizing its picture-perfect natural beauty often camouflages the myriad struggles and challenges faced by thousands of residents, many of whom support the very quality of life that attracts second-home owners just like him. "If I want my little village to remain the idyllic setting it is, we need to invest back into the community, to make sure it keeps pace with the needs of its full-time and seasonal residents," he says. "We can't let the Cape and Islands deteriorate from a social service point of view and erode the life we all love and enjoy here."

Doreen Bilezikian came to the Cape four decades ago. "I know vividly what it is like to be a working mother of two young children, struggling to make a living year-round when so much of the economy is only a four- to six-month one," she recounts. "When I first came here, it was a very rural place. If there was a hitchhiker on Willow Street, five people would call me to be sure my kids were safe. It was a real community. But today, we have problems that you would see in big cities: growing poverty, drug and alcohol use, children who are unsupervised during the day because their parents must hold down three or four jobs between them," she observes. "Whether it is health care, children on Nantucket, or the astronomically growing number of Alzheimer patients among the aging population, the Cape and Islands will need all our help," says Bilezikian.

She and Murphy have volunteered to help the Cape & Islands United Way launch an unprecedented outreach program focused especially toward second-home owners who continue to comprise an ever-larger percentage of all households here. "Second-home owners, like myself, must appreciate the need to direct some of our charity at work and in our full-time communities to our other home on Cape Cod or the Islands," says Murphy. "I don't think second-home owners disregard needs here. If they are like me, they probably have not realized the need. We have to educate them." For the complete article please click below: