Light Hearted

Jonathon Gaare (Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society) Jonathon Gaare, executive director of the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society in New York, last joined us in December 2024. In this episode, Jonathon updates us on preservation projects at the lighthouse, the exciting events lined up for Fire Island Light Station’s 200th anniversary this year, and some exciting historical finds. The current lighthouse at Fire Island, built in 1858, is a 168-foot brick tower. Visitors get to climb the tower for an amazing view, and there’s a museum in the keeper’s house. Another big draw is the separate building that was constructed to exhibit the lighthouse’s old first-order Fresnel lens. The Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society was formed in 1982 to preserve the site. An evening tower tour at Fire Island (Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society)

Bar Harbor Whale Watch’s lighthouse cruise on September 5 will be aboard the Friendship V. This episode focuses on two very special experiences available to lighthouse lovers and lovers of the rocky coast of Maine. The first segment highlights an all-day “Mid-Coast & Monhegan Island 19 Lighthouse Cruise” with Bar Harbor Whale Watch this coming September 5. Interviewed in the segment are Julie Taylor, lead naturalist for Bar Harbor Whale Watch; Zack Klyver, marine mammal scientist, educator, and conservationist; and Bob Trapani Jr., executive director of the American Lighthouse Foundation. Together with U.S. Lighthouse Society Historian Jeremy D’Entremont and photographer Mike Leonard, this team will narrate the September 5th cruise. Saddleback Bass Harbor Head Egg Rock Next is an interview with Captain Barry King of the schooner Mary Day, which is homeported in Camden, Maine. Jeremy D’Entremont will be on board to help narrate a 6-day lighthouse cruise, July 26 to August 1. A Maine sailing legend, the Mary Day, a two-masted gaff topsail schooner, was built in 1962 by the famous Harvey Gamage Shipyard in South Bristol, Maine. Unlike earlier schooners that were built to fish or to carry cargo, Mary Day was designed and built to carry passengers. The schooner Mary Day Curtis Island Lighthouse in Camden, Maine, and the Camden Hills

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. Bob Napolitano 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. Willamette River Lighthouse, Oregon. USLHS archives.

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. Matinicus Rock Light Station, Maine. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. Whitehead Light Station, Maine. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont.

Fairport Harbor Light Station, photo by. Jeremy D’Entremont. 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. Marty O’Gara and John Ollila by the third-order Fresnel lens from Fairport Harbor Lighthouse, now on display in the museum in the keeper’s house. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. 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.

Nantucket Lightship LV-112. By Arnold Reinhold, Creative Commons license. 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. Bob Mannino 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.

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. Buffalo Main Lighthouse, New York. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. 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.”