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By Bett Padgett, President and Cheryl Shelton-Roberts, Co-founder
Unfortunately, this is happening to nonprofit lighthouse organizations across our country whose core volunteers have given a great deal of precious free time and donated to out-of-pocket expenses to keep their organizations and their lighthouses thriving. The Outer Banks Lighthouse Society (OBLHS) has enjoyed thirty successful years assisting all North Carolina lighthouses and networking leaders within the lighthouse community when help has been needed.
Our original mission in 1994 was to raise awareness to Bodie Island Lighthouse’s deteriorating condition and obtain funds to restore it. A significant part of our goals were to work with various entities including the National Park Service, the Secretary of the Interior, and the U.S. Coast Guard to keep the 1st order Fresnel lens in the Bodie Island Lighthouse and permanent ownership of the lens transferred to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. We were rewarded for our favorable efforts by being allowed to help clean and pack the irreplaceable lens for storage until the two phases of restoration were completed.
We soon became involved in the relocation project for the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. We worked with the Dare County Commissioners, state and national senators, experts in relocating large structures, and had the full support of the American Lighthouse Council, a powerful affiliate of the U.S. Lighthouse Society. Our supportive, collective voice was met with challenges, but we prevailed.
Subsequently, we became a supportive force to ensure that the stewardship of the Currituck Beach Lighthouse was awarded to the Outer Banks Conservationists. During this time, we aided the Washington County Waterways Commission in providing the original National Archives plans to build a reproduction of the first Roanoke River lighthouse in the town of Plymouth, North Carolina. We obtained an acrylic fourth-order Fresnel lens from the Coast Guard for the lighthouse as well.
At Cape Lookout, OBLHS secured a donation of paint for the magnificent beacon that is often overlooked due to its remote location; and, we provided volunteer support and research to identify the lighthouse keepers and locate their descendants for its celebration of 150 years of light.
Through our award-winning newsletter, The Lighthouse News, we brought awareness to efforts by the Old Baldy Foundation to save the then-fragile 1817 lighthouse and assisted with its anniversary celebration of 200 years of light. We also gave support to the Foundation’s search for prisms and bullseye panels belonging to the 1st order Fresnel lens that once served both Cape Fear River traffic as well as oceangoing ships beginning in 1903.
We have been involved in aiding all of North Carolina’s lighthouses with goals not only to see to their needs but also that each one be opened to the public as much as possible for enjoyment and historical interpretation. Our members answered calls to action to write letters, to attend public meetings, and to make donations to preserve our beautiful towers and to educate anyone interested. We have done our job, all of us together, and we have done it well.
Today, our lighthouses are well cared for: Bodie Island Lighthouse is open to the public and in queue for stairs stabilization; Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was relocated away from an eroding shoreline and is now being restored to its original state; moreover, the entire light station is undergoing a transformation that will interpret its glory days during the early twentieth century. Currituck Beach Lighthouse is in good hands with the Outer Banks Conservationists; and, the Oak Island Lighthouse is operated by the outstanding nonprofit Friends of Oak Island Lighthouse. Other lights on our coast have a friends group or are owned by attentive county and state-sponsored entities like the individual Roanoke River Lights in Plymouth and Edenton. Our list of accomplishments is long and grander than we ever expected. OBLHS is respected by state and national lighthouse organizations in response to our having persevered.
Considering that we have accomplished our original purposes, it has been agreed upon by the board of directors that it is time for the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society to wind down. As with many other non-profits, we are struggling to engage younger members to step up to the often enormous, time-consuming work that is required to keep an organization thriving. But we will not go away quickly: We will dissolve slowly with a well-thought-out plan. During this transitional dissolution period, our website will continue to be maintained, our youth travel grants to help children to visit lighthouses will be offered, and our brochures of which we have distributed hundreds of thousands over the years for free will be reprinted to continue educating the public about North Carolina’s legendary lighthouses and their special place in American history. We will continue until our funds have been thoughtfully spent while continuing to have a presence at community lighthouse events when asked, including the reopening of Ocracoke and Cape Hatteras Lighthouses after completed restorations.
We are saddened to see this bittersweet time come, but we know our members will always love our lighthouses. We hope that they will volunteer to help them whenever possible, and we are grateful to them for their many years of commitment to our Society and to saving the history of our lighthouses. We also would like to thank all other lighthouse organizations for their dedication to lighthouses in their communities while preserving and honoring the history of these magnificent lights. It is, after all, a labor of love, and we deeply appreciate your unwavering efforts.
But, perhaps, most of all, when you join a lighthouse group, you become a part of a larger family of caring people, and that is a lasting, uplifting experience from which we all can benefit.
This story appeared in the
Jan/Feb 2025 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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