BRIDPORT — One day last week Bridport resident Susan Massed got in touch with her roots by sending a kite high into the sky.
A native of Nantucket, an island of the coast of Massachusetts, Massed took part in a special challenge she had seen on a friend’s Facebook page.
“I saw a promotion put up by the Nantucket Kiteworks,” Massed said. “And I applied to be a part of it.”
Nantucket Kiteworks built a 74-inch, polka dot kite named “Stanley” that is made with cotton and completely handcrafted. The challenge it issued was to get this kite flown in each state and Massed volunteered to fly the kite in the Green Mountain State.
“They sent me a free baseball cap and a letter thanking me for joining the challenge,” Massed said. “My husband and I wanted to fly the kite somewhere that best represented the beauty of Vermont.”
Since she is a relative newcomer to Vermont, she stuck with what she knew.
“We decided to fly it above our property in Bridport and also in Charlotte,” Massed said. “The flights went very well and we did our best to get beautiful Vermont scenery in the background.”
Nantucket Kiteworks owner Stephen Young said he founded the company because he recalled the beautiful cotton kites he’d seen when visiting the island as a kid in the 1960s and ’70s. Once the company was off ground, so to speak, he looked for a way to tell others about old-fashioned kites.
“Stanley was what I thought to be a fun  idea to spread the word of my new venture and get people turned on to flying kites again,” Young wrote in an email. “I named him Stanley after flat Stanley.
“The goal is to have Stanley flown and photographed and then posted to Facebook in each state.”
Vermont was the 15th state (plus the District of Columbia) in which Stanley has flown.
In addition to getting the rolling green hills of Vermont in her photos of Stanley, Massed also managed to get an army flag on a flagpole in the frame with the kite. The people at Nantucket Kiteworks took notice of that.
“Our son is in the army,” Massed said. “And Kiteworks sent us a free red, white and blue flag in honor of our son.”
Photos of the flight can be viewed on the Nantucket Kiteworks Facebook page and more information on the challenge can be found at nantucketkiteworks.com.