Light Hearted

Listen to the podcast episode with this player: Dianna Stampfler Dianna Stampfler has written countless articles for many Michigan travel and culture periodicals. In August 2004, she launched Promote Michigan to help market the people, places, and products of her home state. Dianna has also been researching Michigan’s lighthouses for more than 10 years. In 2019, she published her book Michigan’s H...

The Amateur Radio Lighthouse Society, or ARLHS , was formed in 2000. The ARLHS is devoted to maritime communications, amateur radio, lighthouses, and lightships. Its members travel to lighthouses around the world where they operate amateur radio equipment at or near the light stations. Other goals of the ARLHS include working to increase public awareness of the role ham radio and lighthouses have...

The light station on East Brother Island in Richmond, California, was established in 1874 . After nearly a century as a staffed light station, East Brother was automated and destaffed in the summer of 1969. The building deteriorated for a decade until the Coast Guard granted a license for restoration to a new nonprofit organization, East Brother Light Station, Inc. The property was restored and ev...

Listen to the podcast with this player: The lighthouse at Sumburgh Head, established in 1821, is the oldest lighthouse in the Shetland Islands, a part of Scotland. The light station is on a dramatic promontory at the southern tip of Mainland, Shetland, the largest of the islands and the fifth largest island in the British Isles. It was designed by Robert Stevenson, one of the most prolific and cel...

Listen to the podcast with this player: This is part two of two episodes about Pater Noster Lighthouse off the west coast of Sweden. The light station is operated as a small hotel that features rooms with a sea view, a restaurant, and three boathouses for dinner and conferences. The lighthouse hotel has formed a partnership with the Göteborg (or Gothenberg) Film Festival . The festival, which bega...

You can listen to the podcast with this player: 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 cast-iron lighthouse on one of the islands was constructe...

Listen to the podcast with this player: Pointe-au-Père is near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and about 160 miles northeast of Quebec City, Canada. For many years, river pilots helped incoming vessels to steer safely toward Quebec City. The Montreal Ocean Steamship Company established the first lighthouse and foghorn on Pointe-au-Père in 1859. The government of Canada purchased the lighthouse...

Both of the lighthouses featured in this episode are celebrating their 150th anniversaries in 2021. Souter Lighthouse is on the northeast coast of England, in South Shields, Tyne and Wear. A lighthouse was much needed here because of dangerous reefs offshore. When the light went into operation on January 11, 1871, it was one of the first lighthouses in the world to be built specifically to operate...

Angeli Perrow Angeli Perrow was born in Rockland on the Maine coast. Her grandfather was a lobsterman and her uncle fished the Grand Banks. As a child, Angeli delighted in exploring the beach with her grandmother, collecting shells and sea glass. She also started writing poems and stories when she was a child. Angeli taught elementary school for 30 years before retiring two years ago. Maine’...

Patos Island is the northernmost of the San Juan Islands in the state of Washington. The 207-acre island is in the Strait of Georgia, just two miles from the Canadian border. A light and fog signal station was established in 1893 on Alden Point, the northwestern tip of the island, and a more substantial lighthouse building was added in 1908. Patos Island Lighthouse, U.S. Lighthouse Society photo....

Use this player to hear the podcast: The Titanic Memorial Lighthouse stands today near the buildings of the South Street Seaport Museum, at the corner of Fulton and Pearl streets at the southern end of Manhattan. From 1913 to 1968, it was a familiar sight in its location atop the Seaman’s Church Institute, overlooking the East River. The cornerstone for the lighthouse was laid on April 16, 1912, o...

Sandy Neck is a half-mile wide, six-mile long peninsula on the north side of Cape Cod, marking the entrance to Barnstable Harbor as well as the approach to the small harbor at Yarmouthport. A light station at the eastern tip of Sandy Neck went into service on October 1, 1826. The original lighthouse was replaced in 1857 by the 48-foot brick tower that still stands. Sandy Neck Light Station circa 1...

Use this player to listen to the podcast episode: The brightly striped red and white tower on Sambro Island, near Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, is the oldest lighthouse in the Americas. The first act passed by the Nova Scotia House of Assembly, on October 2, 1758, authorized the lighthouse. It was paid for by a tax on vessels entering Halifax Harbour. The station was automated and destaffed in 198...

Use this player to listen to the podcast episode: Tybee Island Light Station in 2009. U.S. Lighthouse Society photo by J. Candace Clifford. Tybee Island’s Lighthouse is the oldest and tallest in Georgia, and it’s one of the most intact historic light stations in the U.S. Sarah Jones The Savannah River marks the border between Georgia and South Carolina. The river was vital to the early...

Use this player to hear the podcast: Dan Spinella began his Fresnel lens research and restoration work in 1992. His first project was to provide engineering drawings to aid in the restoration of the St. Augustine Lighthouse first-order Fresnel lens. Several restoration projects followed, using both acrylic and glass prisms used to restore historic Fresnel lenses. Dan’s company, Artworks Florida ,...

Use this player to listen to the podcast episode: Halfway Rock is a windswept, rocky ledge far out in Maine’s Casco Bay, about nine miles east of Portland Head. Its name comes from its location about halfway between Cape Elizabeth and Cape Small. A 76-foot granite lighthouse tower was built on the ledge in the summer of 1871. It’s now privately owned and has been restored in recent years. Ha...

Although our nation has made much progress in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and we can now all start to see a guiding light at the end of the tunnel, it will still be several months before lighthouse visitation picks up to near-normal levels and for some organizations that may not happen until the 2022 season. The Board of Directors of the U.S. Lighthouse Society has therefore unanimously agree...

Sheringham Point Lighthouse. BC. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. Sheringham Point, in the community of Shirley, about 16 miles northwest from Race Rocks near the south end of Vancouver Island, was named in 1846 for the British Vice Admiral William Louis Sheringham of the Royal Navy. The wreck of the steamer Valencia nearby in 1906, with the loss of at least 126 lives, had put pressure on the Ca...

Jim Bruton was born in Wales in 1926, but his family relocated to British Columbia in Canada when he was just one year old. He started working in the logging industry when he was 14. After serving as a merchant seaman during World War II, in 1945 Bruton became an assistant keeper, or junior keeper, at Lennard Island Lightstation, off the west coast of Vancouver Island near Tofino. Jim and Evelyn B...

Pete Lerro is a graduate of Temple University in Pennsylvania, where he studied video, audio, and photography. In his career as a photographer, Pete has done work for the Department of Homeland Security, the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, and USA Gymnastics, among others. When he’s not on assignment, he organizes photo workshops across the country. With Pete’s unique workshops, guests can expect special a...

This is part two of a two part interview with Richard Cummins, a native of Ireland who worked as a lighthouse keeper in that country for a decade. He spent time at the very famous Fastnet Rock Lighthouse; at Hook Head, the oldest operating lighthouse in the world, and some other well known light stations – more than 20 in all. A clip from the interview with Richard Cummins: Download Here’s a...

Richard Cummins Richard Cummins is a native of Ireland who, for about 10 years ending in 1989, worked as a lighthouse keeper in that country. He spent time at the very famous Fastnet Rock Lighthouse; at Hook Head, the oldest operating lighthouse in the world, and some other well known light stations – more than 20 in all. Hook Head, County Wexford, Ireland. Photo by Richard Cummins After his time...

The U.S. Lighthouse Society podcast “Light Hearted” was launched in June 2019. The podcast’s name refers to people who have lighthouses in their hearts. It’s the only podcast that’s devoted to the subject of lighthouses. Since it was launched, 100 episodes have featured interviews with lighthouse keepers, authors, historians, and preservationists — and much...

Elizabeth Spires was born in Lancaster, Ohio, and she now lives in Baltimore, Maryland. She has always admired the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and by the time she was twelve she had decided to be a writer. When she was in college at Vassar, she began writing poetry seriously. That led to the publication of seven collections of poetry for adults, most recently A Memory of the Future , which was a Ne...

Like his father before him, young Joseph Hindley went to work in the textile mills of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Looking for a more adventurous life, he spent some time in the Coast Guard. He then entered the Lighthouse Service. He had a long career as a lighthouse keeper that spanned from the late 1920s to 1972, when he retired as the last civilian keeper in the New England region. He served at...