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I have loved lighthouses for as long as I can remember. I was born and raised on Cape Cod, where at its zenith, nineteen light stations operated, including three in my hometown. We had a connection to these lights because my father’s family are sea people, beginning with my great-great grandfather who washed up on an outer Cape beach in 1852, surviving the sinking of the coal brig he was crew on.
I remember as a kid, being awestruck by lighthouses wherever I went. My family often patronized Cape Cod’s Maritime Week every May and many lights still under Coast Guard control would be open to the public. I can still recall the novel feeling of seeing a light up close that I had only seen in photos. At home I would sketch lighthouses and read the many books I had collected about them. Word of my interest spread and family members near and far would send me lighthouse postcards or newspaper articles to put into my scrapbook. My favorite book was Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie” and I read it over and over until I wore the pages out of it.
In elementary school, our class took a field trip to a beach just west of Stage Harbor Light in Chatham, Massachusetts. The teacher told my mother that I had been reciting historical facts about the light and that she couldn’t believe that it was so accurate. A family friend had two oil paintings in her living room of the 1841 Chatham twin lights. Frequently, I would get lost staring at these paintings to the point of being mesmerized. In adulthood, I was given the paintings as a gift and they proudly hang in my own living room, where occasionally I admire them like I did as a child. My love of lighthouses was no secret to anyone, so I jumped at the invitation of a tour of the privately owned Stage Harbor Light. The winter caretaker was a local gentleman named Henry Szemplenski or “Ski” and was a friend of my father. I have vivid memories of that bleak winter day, driving down that soft sand road nearly a mile in Dad’s stake body Ford; Mom and us kids in the back and Dad and Ski up front. The photo of a stoic six-year-old kid climbing the Stage Harbor tower could only scratch the surface of the involvement I would have with lighthouses someday!
My childhood years were a time before the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act and thus most lighthouse properties were still under the control of the U.S. Coast Guard. It is these Coast Guard era stories of staffed light stations that I enjoy the most in Lighthouse Digest. In school, my best friend and I talked of someday joining the Coast Guard. He said his interest was owed to the fleet of boats utilized; my interest was in the lighthouses. All I ever wanted to be when I grew up was a lighthouse keeper.
During my senior year, I enrolled in a community internship class and was granted my first choice of interning with Coast Guard Station Chatham, also the location of Chatham Light. The Executive Petty Officer drafted a training course so that another student and I were “welcomed aboard” as new recruits, working with the Deck Department, Engineering Department, and learning about standing radio watches. During our weekly meeting at school, some fellow classmates were incredulous when I shared that I got to extinguish and re-light Chatham Light as part of the testing of equipment. One day, I even watched through high powered binoculars from the lantern room as other classmates skipped school to sunbathe on the beach out front! At the urging of two Boatswain’s Mates, I joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary and became certified as a Communications Watch stander, answering phones and intercepting marine radio traffic. The mission of the Coast Guard and the history that continued to flow through it really appealed to me. As something extra, I decided to help with public tours of the light, combining two passions: history and lighthouses.
After having gotten married and raising our first child, I talked to my wife about getting back “aboard” lighthouses. I felt that during the intervening years I had become detached from my earliest passion and that I felt a void in my life because of it. Nearly a decade after having started working at Chatham Light, I became a volunteer guide at Nauset Beach Light, the 1877 twin light to Chatham, located down the coast at Eastham. Shortly after my first tour season, I was invited to join the board of directors of the Nauset Light Preservation Society, a volunteer organization who not only moved the light from the eroding cliff in 1996, but continue to operate and maintain it as a private aid to navigation. Today, lighthouses are a hub of our family, and we travel to visit as many as we can throughout New England. My two daughters sometimes accompany their dad to work on the light, and maybe someday they will be the next generation to keep the lights burning. Thanks to years of reading Lighthouse Digest and the advent of social media, I have made friends with other passionate lighthouse lovers and keepers such as Chris Mills and the late Seamond Roberts.
A couple of years back, a teacher I knew from elementary school, and I saw one another. She told me that what she remembered the most about me was my fascination with lighthouses and asked if I was still interested in them? She smiled when I told her that I was still quite involved in lighthouse life, happy to know that some dreams never go away.
This story appeared in the
May/Jun 2024 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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