Light Hearted

Don Terras, seen through the Fresnel lens in the Grosse Point Lighthouse. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. Grosse Point Lighthouse , located at the southern end of Lake Michigan in Evanston, Illinois, was established in 1873 as the primary lighthouse marking the approach to Chicago. The lighthouse tower stands 113 feet tall and is constructed of Cream City brick encased in concrete. Still in use...

Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse, U.S. Lighthouse Society photo. Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse is probably the best-known lighthouse in Maryland, and it has many distinctions. It’s the last surviving screwpile lighthouse in Chesapeake Bay, and it’s one of the few lighthouses in the United States to be designated a National Historic Landmark. It’s weathered many storms but it’s now in need of help. Jo...

Sakonnet Point Lighthouse under restoration; photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. Featured in this episode of Light Hearted is an interview with Scott Brown, president of Friends of Sakonnet Lighthouse . In 1882, Congress appropriated $20,000 for a lighthouse on Little Cormorant Rock at the entrance to Rhode Island’s Sakonnet River, near Little Compton. Sakonnet Point Lighthouse is a typical o...

Black Rock Harbor (Fayerweather Island) Lighthouse in September 2019. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. With its harbor at the mouth of the Pequonnock River, Bridgeport, Connecticut, became a center of trade, shipbuilding, and whaling. This episode of Light Hearted features two interviews related to the history of lighthouses in the vicinity of Bridgeport, with Bruce Williams and Phil Blagys. Bri...

In 1864 the Elbow Reef Light Station went into service at Hope Town, a small settlement on Elbow Cay, one of the barrier islands off Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas. The lens and rotation equipment, made in the early 1900s by Chance Brothers of Birmingham, England, is still in place today. The fuel is kerosene and the lens rotates on a mercury float. The keeper on duty has to wind up the weights...

The Flying Santa passes Boston Light, 1947 (Friends of Flying Santa) Capt. William Wincapaw (Friends of Flying Santa) The Flying Santa tradition goes back to December 25, 1929, when a floatplane pilot, William Wincapaw of Friendship, Maine, loaded his plane with a dozen packages. He flew to lighthouses around the Midcoast Maine area and dropped the modest gifts for lighthouse families as a way of...

Jim Pope The jagged ledge known as Whaleback lurks menacingly on the northeast side of the entrance to the Piscataqua River. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the Piscataqua, was established as an important port for shipbuilding and trade before the American Revolution, and wrecks occurred around the ledges at mouth of the river with sickening regularity. The first lighthouse built on the ledge in 183...

Pigeon Point Light Station in April 2015. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. Pigeon Point Lighthouse is tied for the tallest lighthouse tower in California at 115 feet, and it’s a favorite of sightseers and photographers. In September of this year, California State Parks officials announced that more than $9 million in state funding will go to the lighthouse for a major renovation that will take p...

This is a special edition of Light Hearted , devoted to a discussion of the movie The Lighthouse. The Lighthouse is directed and produced by Robert Eggers, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Max Eggers. Shot in black-and-white, the film follows two lighthouse keepers (portrayed by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson) who start to lose their sanity when a storm hits the remote island on whi...

Sam Reid at the Wood Island Lifesaving Station (courtesy of Sam Reid) This podcast is devoted to lighthouses and lightships, but today’s episode takes a slight detour to a related subject. The U.S. Lifesaving Service is sometimes referred to as a sister service to the Lighthouse Service. Wood Island is a small island about a quarter of a mile inside the mouth of the Piscataqua River in Kitte...

Lightship Chesapeake (U.S. Lighthouse Society photo) The first lightship in the United States was established at Chesapeake Bay in 1820, and the total number in the U.S. peaked in 1909 with 56 locations marked. From 1820 until 1983, there were 179 lightships built for the U.S. government. The official use of lightships for navigation in the United States ended in 1985. It’s estimated that there ar...

Sally Snowman in her early days in the Coast Guard Auxilary next to the second-order Fresnel lens at Boston Light. Photo by Jay Thomson. In part two of Jeremy D’Entremont’s two-part interview with Sally Snowman, keeper of Boston Light Station on Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor, Sally discusses Sammy the Boston Light Dog, subject of a children’s book that Sally wrote. Sall...

Sally Snowman (U.S. Postal Service photo by Dan Afzal) In 1989, the U.S. Coast Guard was planning for Boston Light on Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor to be the last light station in the United States to be automated and destaffed. Instead, Congress mandated that the station be operated and staffed permanently by the Coast Guard. In 2003, the active duty Coast Guard personnel that had been...

Point San Luis Lighthouse; photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. Jack San Filippo In this episode, host Jeremy D’Entremont interviews Jack San Filippo, program manager for the Point San Luis Lighthouse on the central California coast. The Point San Luis Lighthouse Keepers, a dedicated group of preservationists established in 1995, have brought the building back to life as one of the prettiest l...

Burnt Coat Harbor Light Station, photo by Jeremy D’Entremont In this episode host Jeremy D’Entremont interviews Eric and Fran Chetwynd of the Swans Island Lighthouse Committee in Maine about the restoration of the 1872 Burnt Coat Harbor Lighthouse . The still-active automated light is still maintained by Coast Guard aids to navigation personnel, while the light station became the prope...

Eric Jay Dolin This episode is hosted by Jeremy D’Entremont and Cindy Johnson, and the featured interview is the award-winning maritime historian Eric Jay Dolin. Eric has written thirteen books and more than 60 articles on American history. His books include Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America , which won a number of awards and was selected as one of the best nonfiction books of 200...

Terry Rowden (photo by Jeremy D’Entremont) The featured interview in this episode is Terry Rowden, a native of Michigan. Bob Trapani, Jr., executive director of the American Lighthouse Foundation, joined Light Hearted host Jeremy D’Entremont to take part in this interview, which was recorded inside the keeper’s house at Little River Light Station. Terry Rowden served as a keeper...

Tom Tag (left) accepting a Holland Award from American Lighthouse Council president Don Terras in 2011. The award is named for the historian Francis Ross Holland, Jr., who received the initial Distinguished Service Award that was to henceforth carry his name. The featured interview in this episode is with Tom Tag, who is the technical advisor for the U.S. Lighthouse Society. Tom’s passion fo...

Chris Mills In this episode, host Jeremy D’Entremont interviews Canadian author and former lighthouse keeper Chris Mills. Chris is originally from Ontario, but he has lived most of his life in Nova Scotia. He built his first lighthouse when he was six years old, and landed his first three-week job as a relief assistant on Cross Island, near Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, at the age of 24. Between 1...

Mark Kuehn Join Jeremy D’Entremont and co-host Cindy Johnson for an interview with Mark Kuehn of the North Point Lighthouse Museum in Wisconsin. North Point Lighthouse is in Lake Park on the East Side of Milwaukee. The lighthouse and the Queen Anne-style keeper’s house have been restored to their early twentieth century charm through the determined efforts of a group of volunteers, the North...

Ford Reiche at Halfway Rock. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. Join hosts Jeremy D’Entremont and Michelle Jewell Shaw for an interview with Ford Reiche, the award-winning owner of remote Halfway Rock Lighthouse i n Casco Bay in Maine. Ford Reiche has been an attorney and an entrepreneur; in 2008 he was named the Maine Small Businessperson of the Year and the Mainebiz Business Leader of the...

Chad Kaiser Join hosts Jeremy D’Entremont and Cindy Johnson. First up is part two of an interview with Chad Kaiser, general manager of the New Dungeness Light Station in Sequim, Washington. Chad is also a lighthouse preservationist and one of only a handful of qualified lampists in the country who are approved by the U.S. Coast Guard to work on historic Fresnel lighthouses lenses. It’s Chad’...

Russ Rowlett (Univ. of North Carolina) Host Jeremy D’Entremont is joined by co-host Michelle Jewell Shaw. When Russ Rowlett was growing up in Richmond, Virginia, his only exposure to lighthouses was climbing the Old Cape Henry Lighthouse when his family vacationed at Virginia Beach. Russ started his web site, The Lighthouse Directory, in 1999, and it kept growing until, by 2009, it covered t...

The Nantucket Lightship LV112 was offshore during the August 7, 1989, celebration at Maine’s Portland Head Lighthouse. Photo by Jeremy D’Entremont. This is a special edition of Light Hearted in honor of National Lighthouse Day, August 7. It was on this date in 1789 that the first Congress approved an act for the establishment and support of lighthouses, beacons, buoys, and public piers...

Kathryn Onos DiPhilippo at the Cushing’s Point Museum The city of South Portland, with a bit over 25,000 people, is the fourth-largest city in Maine. It is situated on Portland Harbor and looks out onto the islands of Casco Bay. South Portland is home to two lighthouses and is close to several others. The Cushing’s Point Museum, adjacent to Bug Light Park, the location of Portland Breakwater...