Light Hearted

In last week’s episode of Light Hearted we spoke with Skip Sherwood, the director of the U.S. Lighthouse Society’s lighthouse passport program, and with Scott Walbert, who is one of the volunteers who coordinates the program. In this episode we meet four of the Hall of Fame Lighthouse Passport stamp collectors.

First is James Hill of Winter Park, Florida, a deputy sheriff with the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office. Next is Sharon Mills of Kittery, Maine, who has been a volunteer and chapter leadership committee member for Friends of Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouses. After that is Al King. Al has lived in Florida and has been a volunteer for the Florida Lighthouse Association, and he now lives in Georgia. The fourth and final guest is John MacFarland of Pennsylvania, a retired educator who’s better known to his friends in the lighthouse world as Mac.

The U.S. Lighthouse Society’s Lighthouse Passport Program provides enthusiasts the opportunity to help preserve lighthouses as well as a wonderful way to keep a pictorial history of their lighthouse adventures. Small donations are made by passport holders for the stamps. The lighthouse passports can be bought through the U.S. Lighthouse Society website and at many participating locations.

Skip Sherwood, a retired college professor, and his wife, Mary Lee, have led many of the U.S. Lighthouse Society’s domestic and international tours. Skip is also the director of the Lighthouse Passport Program. Scott Walbert lives in Pennsylvania and is one of the hall of fame lighthouse passport stamp collectors, and he and his wife Diane also volunteer and do a lot of the behind the scenes work to keep the passport program going.

Oak Island Lighthouse went into service in 1958 near the mouth of the Cape Fear River in southeastern North Carolina. It’s been owned by the Town of Caswell Beach since 2004, and it’s managed by the nonprofit Friends of Oak Island Lighthouse. From 1958 to 1962, Oak Island Lighthouse had the brightest navigational light in the United States. It was the next to last lighthouse constructed in the United States.

In 2014, E. Gifford Stack was honored by the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society with a Fresnel Prism Award for his contributions to lighthouses and their history. He has been a longtime tour guide at the lighthouse and serves as the tour coordinator. He has escorted more than 400 tours to the top of the tower over the past nine years.

He also serves as a board member on the Brunswick Civil War Round Table and volunteers with the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office. He is also an avid motorcycle rider.

Friends of Oak Island Lighthouse

Tawas Point Lighthouse, located in Tawas Point State Park in Baldwin Township in Northern Michigan, is an attraction for maritime buffs and also a destination for birdwatchers, with spectacular views over Lake Huron and Tawas Bay.

The brick tower is 70 feet tall. The State of Michigan acquired Tawas Point Light Station from the Coast Guard in 2002. In 2008, the upper floor of the keeper’s house was converted into an apartment where modern day keepers can pay to live for a week or two.

Tawas Point Lighthouse is one of twelve sites that comprise the

From the time it was founded in 1984, the United States Lighthouse Society has maintained an Archive of lighthouse data including photos, documents, and many other items pertaining to lighthouses, lightships, and related subjects. Starting in 2016, J. Candace Clifford, the Society’s Historian, and Tom Tag, the Society’s Technical Advisor, began researching ways of making the Archive more easily accessible to the public. Their work culminated in a database that is now on the U.S. Lighthouse Society’s website as the J. Candace Clifford Lighthouse Research Catalog.

Among the major components of the lighthouse research catalog is the lighthouse-related collection of the National Archives. Many of the photos and other items from the National Archives have been added to the Society’s research catalog. The National Archives and Records Administration is the primary repository in our country for lighthouse records.

The interview for this special edition is Jack Del Nunzio. Jack is 22 years old and a full-time Master of Arts student in public history. He currently lives just outside of Baltimore. He has several part-time jobs. He’s a graduate ambassador at American University in Washington, D.C., a digital editor with the journal Law & History Review, and a crossfit coach. He’s also been a researcher & cataloger for the U.S. Lighthouse Society since February 2019.

Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse is the last screwpile cottage-style light station in its original location in Chesapeake Bay. It’s located about a mile and a half offshore from the nearest point of land in Annapolis, Maryland. The City of Annapolis owns the lighthouse, and the Chesapeake Chapter of the U.S. Lighthouse Society manages it. The Annapolis Maritime Museum serves as the departure point for boat tours to the lighthouse.

This episode features an interview with Bob Stevenson, one of the key coordinators of the public tour program at the lighthouse. He is also the docent training coordinator and has been with the preservation program at Thomas Point Shoal since the very beginning.

Also featured is an interview with Gary Riemenschneider, who has developed much of the helpful and interesting educational material on the U.S. Lighthouse Society website. For anyone who has used the published Light Lists for research, you know how tedious it can be. Gary has added historical light list data to the USLHS website, and it’s available to researchers. It’s also integrated with the J. Candace Clifford Lighthouse Research Catalog on the site. USLHS Executive Director Jeff Gales also took part in this interview.

Lighthouse tenders were ships that were specifically designed to maintain, support, or tend to lighthouses or lightships by providing supplies, fuel, mail, and transportation. The tender Lilac was launched in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1933.

Nearly 175 feet long, Lilac was equipped with a steam-powered boom that could lift buoys weighing 14 tons or more. Lilac was assigned to the Fourth Lighthouse District covering Delaware Bay and its approaches, north to Trenton, New Jersey. 

Today, Lilac is a museum ship at Pier 25 in the Tribeca section of Hudson River Park in New York City. The ship is now open to the public on a regular basis. Mary Habstritt is the museum director and president for the Lilac Preservation Project. She also works as a freelance historical consultant, interpreting and telling the stories of America’s manufacturing and engineering past. 

Lilac Preservation Project

Peter Gellatly is a lecturer in accounting and administration at the Coatbridge campus of New College Lanarkshire in Scotland. About 25 years ago he saw a lighthouse on his way to the Isle of Man, and he was mesmerized.

He has photographed many lighthouses on his travels over the years, and more recently he has built up a lighthouse memorabilia collection ranging from uniforms to a 19th-century oil painting, presentation salver, and embossed crockery reserved for the visits of lighthouse commissioners.

He has been loaning his collection of artifacts and photos to lighthouses around the U.K. for display, and he has also published a book called Following the Lights, a guide to visiting and staying at lighthouses in Scotland and the Isle of Man.

You can read more about Peter’s traveling exhibit and his book at www.followingthelights.com. Peter’s love for visiting, photographing, and researching lighthouses, and collecting memorabilia, is infectious, as you’ll hear in this interview.

The United States Lighthouse podcast Light Hearted was launched in June 2019 as the only podcast completely devoted to lighthouses and their history, preservation, and lore. This marks the fiftieth episode, not counting a few “special editions.” To mark this milestone, this episode is different than most. Rather than featuring an interview with a guest from the lighthouse world, this episode features a free-wheeling discussion with hosts Jeremy D’Entremont, Cindy Johnson, and Michelle Jewell-Shaw.

Michelle, Cindy, and Jeremy reveal how their interest in lighthouses began and how all three of them became involved with Friends of Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouses on the New Hampshire Seacoast. They discuss what they love most about their work at Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse, and what they think are the biggest challenges facing lighthouse organizations today.

They also look back on the first eight months of Light Hearted and what they’ve enjoyed the most, what they’d like to see in the future, and what they think is the value of a podcast devoted to lighthouses. We hope you’ll enjoy this episode as much as Jeremy, Michelle, and Cindy enjoyed making it.

Living history performances are utilized at many museums and lighthouses, but few light stations have utilized the concept of living history to the extent that Burnt Island Light Station in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, does. The Maine Department of Marine Resources acquired the Burnt Island Light Station in 1998 as part of the Maine Lights Program. Burnt Island’s restored light station buildings and grounds have been transformed into a living history museum where interpreters in period costume portray a historic lighthouse family.

Visitors arrive by tour boat from Boothbay Harbor and disembark at the island, where they learn about life on the island from Keeper Joseph Muise, his wife Annie, and their children as they recount their daily activities and share their stories of joy, sorrow, dedication, and survival.

Katie Brydon started playing the role of one of the daughters of Keeper Joseph Muise at Burnt Island while she was a drama major at Emerson College in Boston. A few years later, she and her husband played the keeper and his wife for a while. In this interview, she talks about the experience and the value of living history programs at historic sites.

Today, Katie is the national director of programs for Best Buddies International, a nonprofit organization that consists of volunteers who create opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Burnt Island Light Station

Keepers of Burnt Island Light

Best Buddies International