Islander Ila Lee writes about a childhood illuminated.
In her new memoir, “Children of the Lighthouse,” Lee describes her early life in a family of lighthouse keepers. Her father, Wyman Albee, mother Ruth Albee, sisters Lavinia and Ellen and her brother Allen manned light stations along the Oregon Coast and in Washington’s San Juan Islands.
Since the first U.S. tower was built in Massachusetts in 1718, the setting has proven lonely for lighthouse keepers – stationed on isolated crags and cliffs, buffeted by the worst of every storm – but it was an ideal setting for kids, Lee contends.
“We had beaches and land around the station to play on,” she said. “We galloped our legs all over the place. We’d fix up ‘stores’ with cartons and cans that washed up on the beach.”
For her father, daytime was devoted to maintenance. The United States Lighthouse Service founded in 1789, and the overseeing Lighthouse Board established by Congress in 1852, maintained strict rules about everything from paint colors to brass trim.
The work was strenuous. Keepers lugged supplies up the spiral tower steps, and cleaned and polished lenses and lamps every day.
Keeping the lens clean was crucial, Lee says, because the light was refracted through a prism, with a reflector determining direction of the beam – visible 20 miles at sea.
Height of the light increased geographic range, but early lighthouses built of wood or stone and mortar rose no taller than 90 feet.
In the mid-19th century, when brick was introduced, the towers climbed to 160 feet.
Visiting her father in the tall tower meant following a strict code of behavior, Lee recalls.
“In those days, father’s word was law,” she said. “It was ‘don’t put your fingers on the brass’ and ‘don’t touch the lens.’”
Eye in the dark
Lighthouses served not only as navigational aids for ships at sea, but to help the Coast Guard with military readiness and to prevent smuggling.
For that reason, someone always had to be on watch at night. The hours between dusk and dawn were split between Lee’s father and an assistant keeper.
The station grounds were divided between the two families.
“It was an unwritten rule that the children didn’t mix too much,” Lee said. “At least, it was strongly discouraged, but sometimes we kids would get into ‘scraps.’”
The water, always a palpable presence, was to be respected and feared.
Lighthouse keepers and their families watched from shore as boats were swamped.
Keepers and assistants often risked their own lives – their training included neither swimming nor first aid – to save others.
“I remember one boat,” Lee said. “They were rowing from south to north, and when they hit the currents going north, they sank. My father and the assistant took a thermos of coffee and blankets and rowed out to them.”
The lighthouse at which the Lee family was living switched to electricity from kerosene when Ila Lee was 3 years old. She recalls the night they made the change.
“My dad held my sister Lavinia up so that she could throw the switch for the first time,” she said.
But when lighthouses switched to automation, the keepers were out of a job.
For the Lee family, the end came in 1944, five years after the Coast Guard assumed responsibility for the stations. Her father took a dockside position with the Coast Guard fixing the light stations’ gasoline and diesel engines.
Leaving that lighthouse life coincided with Lee’s entering high school, so the timing was good, she says.
Today, she visits old light stations – there are 594 nationwide, 21 in Washington – when she is on vacation, but she no longer climbs the towers.
“I have arthritis and besides, I know what’s up in a tower,” Lee said. “I always remember that.”
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Ila G. Lee’s memoir, “Children of the Lighthouse” (1st Books Library, 2002) is available at Eagle Harbor Book Company or at www.1stbooks.com. Call 842-3132 for more information.
