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For more than four decades, with over three of them being at Wisconsin’s remote LaPointe Lighthouse, Benjamin S. Hudak served his nation faithfully and with little fanfare. But his life might have turned out much differently if it had not been for his older brother.
Benjamin Hudak, born in Cheboygan, Michigan on April 9, 1896, was the youngest of seven children who grew up in an orphanage after the death of his Polish immigrant parents. At the age of 13, his brother, Louis “John” Hudak, took him out of the orphanage to live with him and Ben got a job in a tanning factory.
When the United States entered the Great War (WWI), Benjamin Hudak joined the United States Army. Just before he was scheduled to ship out to Europe, he came down with the influenza and was hospitalized in serious condition. Given a medical discharge from the army, he returned to live in Cheboygan, Michigan where his brother, who was a lighthouse keeper, convinced him to follow his footsteps and join the U.S. Lighthouse Service.
Ben Hudak’s first assignment was to the Rock of Ages Lighthouse, an isolated stag station that sits surrounded by the waters of Lake Superior east of Isle Royale. Jim Hudak recalled his Dad saying that, at the Rock of Ages Lighthouse, he worked under “The worst keeper God ever put breath in,” and the other assistant keepers who could not work with him soon got transfers. But because of his calm and quiet disposition, Ben was able to put up with him and stayed for a number of years. However, since he worked under more than one head keeper at different times, it is unknown which head keeper he was talking about.
In December of 1926 as the shipping season came to a close at the Rock of Ages Lighthouse, head keeper Joseph Metivier, and assistant keepers Ben Hudak, Sterling Malone, and Robert Morrill were waiting for the lighthouse tender Marigold to take them off the lighthouse for the winter months, the Marigold was scheduled to arrive on December 12th – but it did not come. The men were short on fuel to heat the lighthouse, short of food, and as assistant keeper Robert Morrill later told a reporter for the Star Tribune, “Worst of all, we had been out of tobacco for about a week. We ran the light and fog horn until noon of seventeenth,” and then they decided to evacuate.
The keepers left a note pinned to the door of the lighthouse explaining that they had run low on supplies and were worried about being marooned and had decided to leave while there was still a chance to do so.
Launching the station boat, the men had planned to go all the way to Grand Marais, but the heavy ice floes made it impossible. So, the bundled-up keepers made their way across the treacherous icy waters to Pigeon River, Canada and spent the night with a local fisherman, who helped them put the launch up for the winter.
Bud Hudak and two of the men figured that they would stay there until they could catch a ride on the fishing steamer Winyah, which was scheduled to arrive there before its return trip to Two Harbors, Minnesota. However, Robert Morrill did not want to wait with the other men; he wanted to get back to his family in Benedict, Minnesota in time for Christmas. Risking his life, he proceeded to row a skiff from Pigeon Point to Washington Bay, a distance of four and half miles in the rough water that took him four hours. He then hiked through waist-high snow until he found a road and men in a car who gave him a ride to a town for his eventual trip home.
In the meantime, the lighthouse tender Marigold, which had been delayed by heavy seas, finally reached the Rock of Ages Lighthouse only to find the note on the door saying that the keepers had left. Capt. Andrew Gustafson then set course to Washington Harbor at Isle Royale, which was about five miles from the lighthouse. Discovering that the men were not there, he was worried, but not totally concerned until the Marigold reached Duluth, and the keepers still had not been heard from. The newspapers soon carried a story that the keepers from Rock of Ages were missing. By December 20th, when they still had not shown up, the headlines in the papers read “Light Keepers Missing in Storm – Feared Lost.”
Ben Hudak and his fellow keepers, who were slowly making their way back home, had no idea that they were thought to be missing and presumably lost. While reading a newspaper in a coffee shop in Two Harbors, Minnesota, Ben Hudak saw a story that said he and the other three lighthouse keepers were presumed dead. The conversation in the coffee shop that day must have been something to hear.
Upon making it to Duluth, Minnesota, Ben Hudak found out that his paycheck had already been cancelled and sent back to the district office in Cleveland, Ohio. He recalled in later years that he had a hard time being reinstated as living, and getting his pay.
When Mary McQuade met Ben Hudak, her mother told her, “That’s the guy you’re going to marry.” And that’s exactly what happened. They were married in 1929. Being a newly married man is probably what convinced him to apply for a transfer to a more suitable light station where his new wife could spend some time with him.
So, after serving for a number of years at the Rock of Ages Lighthouse, on February 6, 1930 Ben Hudak was able to secure the 2nd assistant keeper position at the LaPointe Lighthouse on Long Island in Lake Superior, Wisconsin.
With the exception of serving at the Marquette Harbor Lighthouse for one year starting in 1935, and one year at Outer Island Light later in 1936, he would serve at LaPointe Lighthouse for a total of 33 years, being promoted to 1st assistant keeper and then becoming head keeper on April 15, 1948, serving in that position until the lighthouse was automated in 1964.
Life at LaPointe Lighthouse was quite different for Ben Hudak than his previous assignment at the Rock of Ages Lighthouse, which was a tower surrounded by water in Lake Superior. In fact, life at LaPointe was pretty much the same as it was at many other island lighthouses. As long as the family had adequate supplies, living there was pretty sustainable. However, unlike ocean-based island lighthouses that were staffed year ‘round, the lighthouses on Lake Superior were generally closed for the winter months when the ice froze the lake over and vessel transport stopped.
Ben Hudak would then return to live in the family home on the mainland in Bayfield, Wisconsin until the shipping season began again in the spring. When school was out the family all came out to live on Long Island with him for the summer. The keepers lived in the original LaPointe keeper’s house until 1938 when a new triplex was built. The old keeper’s house, which had also been the original lighthouse, was then left abandoned, to decay with the elements.
In an interview in the late 1970s, Ben Hudak recalled that it was too difficult to have a garden on Long Island because it was too sandy. But he did say that it was a great place for blueberries; “Best blueberries in the country. My wife and I used to pick blueberries out there and bring them into town and sell them by the crate. $1.75 a crate. Now you pay about ten dollars a crate for them. They were nice big berries. When I picked berries it was just like grapes.” He also said there were plenty of cranberries on the island.
Hudak recalled the time when his wife bought a goat so they could have goat milk. This was during the time that he was briefly stationed on Outer Island Lighthouse. “So I finally took that goat out to the island,” he said. “That —– thing got in a lot of trouble out there, too. I worked with a fellow named Anderson; he was the 2nd assistant. His wife stayed out there; my wife didn’t, the kids were too small. That goat used to crap all over the place.” The goat eventually met its demise at the hands of the 2nd assistant.
During the rest of the year, when Ben Hudak’s wife was living on the mainland in Bayfield with son Jim and daughter Geraldine, she worked at various jobs to supplement the family’s income, including waitressing, grocery store clerk, and at a place called Allwood Manufacturing.
Hudak recalled that he didn’t visit with the light keepers from other islands, saying, “You were darn glad just to visit with your family.” The only time he went to other lighthouses was when he had to take someone or something over, saying, “Outside of that it didn’t make a difference to me if I saw another light or not.”
Living on Long Island at the LaPointe Lighthouse must have sounded pretty exciting for some of the friends of Ben Hudak’s son Jim. But the young boys did get themselves in a bit of trouble from time to time. On one inspection visit to the LaPointe Lighthouse, the Lighthouse Inspector asked, “What are those marks on the lantern glass?” Keeper Hudak told the truth by answering, “That’s where my boy and his friends shot it with a BB gun.” Obviously there was trouble to pay and it never happened again.
In later years, Ben Hudak’s son, Jim, recalled how he and Hans Bard, son of LaPointe Lighthouse head keeper James W. Bard, and two other boys from the mainland built a raft out of boards. All four boys went out on it, but Jim and Hans jumped off, leaving the two other boys on the raft. They then proceeded to throw rocks at them so that they couldn’t land back on the island. Eventually, the raft got swept out in the current and keeper Hudak had to take the light station’s boat out to rescue them. The keeper’s sons received some severe “talking to” that night. That type of behavior was never repeated again.
Ben Hudak built himself a smokehouse on the island, and he became quite adept at smoking fish. A lot of the local fishermen would bring their catch to him to smoke in his smokehouse so they could sell them. Keeper Hudak never charged them for the service.
James Bard, who was the head keeper at LaPointe Lighthouse from 1941 to 1948, apparently liked to drink when he was on leave in Bayfield. One time he took the station boat for a day-trip to go to town on errands, but he didn’t come back for a whole week, leaving the others stranded on the island. Reportedly, keeper Bard was pensioned off in 1948 because of his drinking, and Ben Hudak was promoted to fill the head keeper position, a job that he held for the next 16 years, until the station became automated.
Ben Hudak had become good friends with a local historian named Leo Capser, who wanted to save as much of the area’s history and artifacts as possible. Capser founded the Madeline Island Museum to accomplish that goal. Not only did Ben Hudak donate a number of old Lighthouse Service and other items to create the museum, he worked diligently with Capser and the Coast Guard to secure the 5th order lens from the Raspberry Island Lighthouse for the museum.
Ben Hudak recalled that when the LaPointe Lighthouse was automated and boarded up, everything was simply left where it was. There was a U.S. Lighthouse Service banjo clock on the wall, but he didn’t feel right about taking it. However, when the Coast Guard inspector came, he tucked it under his arm and left with it. Sadly, it didn’t take vandals long to realize that the station was boarded up and the place was soon vandalized.
In November of 1959, Ben Hudak told Bob Murray, a reporter for the Minneapolis Star, “If I had it to do over again, I think I’d do something else. You’re away from your family too much.”
Coastguardsman Ron Schoenrock, who served under Ben Hudak at LaPointe Lighthouse from 1962 to 1963, recalled that Ben was stern – old school – pretty particular about how things were to be done. Each man was required to clean his quarters daily. There were five Coasties assigned to the station then. They did shifts of four hours on and eight hours off. Ben Hudak always took the 8pm to midnight shift. The men served three weeks on the island and then they had a week off. A 40-foot patrol boat would bring out supplies and swap out the crew.
Ben Hudak’s son Jim recalled that his father was a very even-tempered person. He never saw him angry nor heard him speak negative things about other people. Benjamin S. Hudak passed away on September 8, 1981 and is buried in the Calvary Cemetery in Bayfield, Wisconsin. He is remembered as one of our nation’s lighthouse keepers who served with dignity and without fanfare to protect the lives of others.
This story appeared in the
Jan/Feb 2020 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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