Bob Napolitano is from Everett, Massachusetts, and now lives in Londonderry, New Hampshire. “The Lighthouse Keeper,” which was published last year, is his seventh book. The main character, John Russell, takes a job as the keeper of the Willamette River Lighthouse in Oregon at the age of 27 in 1923. He sees the lighthouse as a place to heal from unfortunate decisions he’s made in his life, but he eventually wonders if it’s more of a prison than a sanctuary. Shanghaied sailors, brothel barges, opium and bootleg liquor, and floating bodies all play a part in the story.

The primary setting of the story is the Willamette River Light Station, which stood at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, about ten miles north of downtown Portland, Oregon. It was established in 1895. After it was decommissioned, it eventually burned down, leaving just a few pilings.

In this episode we revisit an interview that was first heard in 2021. Our guest is Jen Lewis, Fundraising and Outreach Manager for the Point Cabrillo Light Station in northern California.

Point Cabrillo is about midway between San Francisco and the border with Oregon. In 1908 a combined lighthouse and fog signal building was built of local redwood and Douglas fir. Today Point Cabrillo Light Station is a California State Historic Park, and the nonprofit Point Cabrillo Lightkeepers Association manages and interprets the site.

Jen Lewis grew up in Oregon, and she began volunteering at Point Cabrillo in 2016. She eventually became the Outreach Manager, taking care of social media and fundraising for the Point Cabrillo Lightkeepers Association. Jen has been on this podcast several times as a guest and as a co-host.

There are two guests in this episode. The first, Bjorn Karlstrom, splits his time between Florida in the and the beautiful island of Gotland in Sweden. After developing a substantial lighthouse-related library, he decided to start a website that might be useful to others looking for information. His site Lighthouse Reading, at lhreading.com, now has listings for more than 3,800 lighthouse publications.

Massachusetts native Kevin Arsenault was a police officer for about 30 years and now serves as constable in the town of Gardner. He joined the Coast Guard at 19 years old in 1976 and was assigned to Matinicus Rock, an isolated outpost about 20 miles from the mainland in midcoast Maine. After a year there, he spent 18 months at Whitehead Light station, much closer to the mainland at the southwestern entrance to Penobscot Bay.

Pater Noster is a small archipelago off the west coast of Sweden. The island group’s name, which means “The Lord’s Prayer,” is said to come from the tradition that mariners would recite the Lord’s Prayer as they negotiated their way around the dangerous reefs in the vicinity. The 105-foot-tall, red, cast-iron lighthouse was constructed in 1868.

A complete restoration of the lighthouse began in 2002. Since 2020, the location has been operated as a small hotel. The facilities include rooms with a sea view, a restaurant, and three boathouses for dinner and conferences. Our guest, Erik Nissen Johansen is the founder and creative director of Stylt Trampoli, a multi-award winning hospitality design company. He is now a partner in the Pater Noster hotel. This is an edited version of a conversation first heard in episode 115 in April 2021.

Fairport Harbor, on the south side of Lake Erie at the mouth of the Grand River, is considered part of the Cleveland, Ohio, metropolitan area. The first lighthouse in the harbor was a 56-foot brick tower built in 1825. The lighthouse that stands today is a 60-foot stone tower that began service in 1871. After a new lighthouse was built on a breakwater in the harbor in 1925, the government planned to destroy the old lighthouse. A number of organizations in the area objected, and the lighthouse was spared. In 1945, the Fairport Harbor Historical Society established a marine museum inside the old keeper’s house. Museum highlights include a Fresnel lens and the infamous “ghost cat” story.

Our guests today are Marty O’Gara and John Ollila. John is the historian for the lighthouse and a trustee of the Fairport Harbor Historical Society. Marty is the president of the Fairport Harbor Historical Society.

Today we look back at an interview that was first heard in October 2020. Our guest is Bob Mannino, founder and president of the United States Lightship Museum. The USLM is the steward of the Nantucket Lightship LV-112, the largest lightship ever built in the United States.

The Nantucket South Shoals were a great hazard to shipping, and a lightship was first stationed at the Shoals in 1854. The last vessel to serve there was the LV-112, built in 1936. Its position was 50 miles southeast of Nantucket Island and 100 miles from the U.S. mainland. The LV-112 was decommissioned in 1975 and today it serves as a floating museum in East Boston, Massachusetts. Bob Mannino has been involved for many years in historic preservation and related educational programs, maritime and non-maritime.

Ile Vierge is a 15-acre island off the northwest coast of Brittany in northwest France. The first lighthouse on the island was a 108-foot-tall square tower that began service in 1845. It was considered too short, and a new tower was built between 1896 and 1902. The new lighthouse tower is built of granite blocks and stands 271 feet tall, with nearly 400 steps inside. It’s considered the tallest traditional-style lighthouse in the world.

The island and the 1902 lighthouse are open to the public on special tour days in the summer. A local company takes visitors out by boat and landing is only possible at high tide. Overnight accommodations are available in the old keepers’ quarters in the base of the 1845 lighthouse. Our guest, Valeria Araúz Molina, is the Ile Vierge project manager. She has guided tours in French, English, and Spanish.

In this episode we revisit a conversation from June 2022 with Mike Vogel, who at that time was the president of the U.S. Lighthouse Society. Mike Vogel retired as editorial page editor of The Buffalo News in 2011, after a 43-year journalism career. He was the organizer and founding president of the Buffalo Lighthouse Association, which carried out the restoration of Buffalo, New York’s historic 1833 lighthouse. He has served as president of the organization for well over two decades.

Mike has also played an important role in the national lighthouse preservation movement. As First Vice President and then president of the American Lighthouse Coordinating Committee, Mike was instrumental in helping the government develop guidelines for the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000. Mike is also the author or co-author of five books , including “Harboring History: The Heritage Behind Buffalo’s 200-Year-Old Overnight Success.”

Jim Lammers, who lives in Minnesota, was educated as an architect back when freehand sketching was an integral part of the curriculum. His writing and sketching has been published in a number of professional journals and on websites. His most recent book is “Lighthouses of the Great Lakes: An Architect’s Sketchbook.”

The illustrations in Jim’s book are not precise architectural renderings. The depictions are roughly accurate in their dimensions and details, but they also have a very personal, slightly whimsical quality. The sketches are Jim’s way of interpreting these scenes and communicating the experience to us.

Split Rock Lighthouse, on a 127-foot-high cliff on the northwest shore of Lake Superior, began service in 1910. The light station is now the centerpiece of 2200-acre Split Rock Lighthouse State Park. Lee Radzak became the lighthouse site manager in November 1982. Over the next 36 years, he and his wife Jane raised a son and a daughter, marveled at the lake’s beauty, endured gigantic storms, and answered the questions posed by more than four million visitors.

After retiring in 2019, Lee began work on a new book — The View from Split Rock: A Lighthouse Keeper’s Life. The book, which was co-written by journalist and author Curt Brown, takes readers into the life of a modern-day lighthouse keeper at Split Rock. This is an edited version of an interview that was first heard in episode 127 in July 2021.