He’s the Keeper of the Flame for Lighthouses

There is no structure as altruistic as a lighthouse. Its only purpose is to serve humanity.

--George Bernard Shaw

Today, Wayne Wheeler will officially launch the start of the Bicentennial of the Lighthouse by cutting the ribbon and delivering the keynote address at the rededication of the 1846 Key West, Fla., Lighthouse.

Wheeler, 50, known to lighthouse aficionados from coast to coast as Mr. Lighthouse, probably knows more about the quaint sentinels that guide ships into safe harbor than anyone alive.

The bearded, blue-eyed San Franciscan is founder-president of the 4,000-member nonprofit historical and educational U.S. Lighthouse Society, sponsor of the yearlong salute to the lighthouse.

“There is a wave of lighthouse restoration projects going on all along America’s coasts and the shores of the Great Lakes,” Wheeler explains. “At Key West, for example, $250,000 was raised in fund drives to restore the lighthouse abandoned by the Coast Guard 20 years ago.”

Wheeler will be busy this year, attending a number of lighthouse rededications at bicentennial celebrations--many on July 4, and some on Aug. 7, set aside by the U.S. Senate as National Lighthouse Day.

It was on Aug. 7, 1789, that President George Washington signed the Lighthouse Act, the first public-works act of the new nation, transferring 12 lighthouses to the federal government.

Newport, R.I., will be the site of the 200th birthday party for lighthouses. The Coast Guard Academy Band will perform, there will be a parade, photograph and art exhibits and workshops pertaining to the history of lighthouses, old keepers swapping stories and the “Ida Rather Be Rowing Regatta,” named after legendary lighthouse keeper Ida Lewis.

Lewis died of a stroke at the Lime Rock Lighthouse in Rhode Island in 1911 after tending the light for more than 50 years. She saved 18 lives and became a national hero, with her picture appearing on the cover of Harper’s Weekly in July, 1869.

In 1910, there were 800 lighthouses in operation in the United States, manned by 1,659 civilian keepers from the U.S. Lighthouse Service. It was the heyday of the colorful structures, which the Senate resolution described as symbolizing “safety, security, heroism, duty and faithfulness.”

In 1939, the Coast Guard assumed responsibility for lighthouses. During the last 25 years, all but nine of the more than 750 lighthouses have been automated. Many have been replaced, in the words of Wheeler, “by rotating aero beacons stuck up on ungainly poles.”

Wheeler, a native of Buffalo, N.Y., was a Coast Guard officer from 1963 to 1975, and the civilian assistant chief to navigation aids for the Coast Guard in San Francisco from 1976 to 1987.

“I started the U.S. Lighthouse Society in 1984 in the dining room of my home,” Wheeler said. “For three years I worked 40 hours a week for the Coast Guard, 35 hours a week for the Lighthouse Society.

“The society got so big I had to quit the Coast Guard,” explained Wheeler, a self-proclaimed “lighthouse nut.”

Poetry and Songs

In 1977, he put together a slide show on the history of lighthouses, beginning with the 45-story Pharos at Alexandria, Egypt, constructed in 280 BC and one of the Seven Wonders of the World. During his presentation, he recites lighthouse poetry, sings sea chanteys and delights audiences with legends and lore of lighthouses.

Mr. Lighthouse has been on the lecture circuit with his one-man show ever since.

“I quickly learned there are people all over America who, like me, are crazy about lighthouses, even people in landlocked places like North Dakota. . . . I decided there ought to be an organization for lighthouse nuts like myself.”

Today, nearly five years later, lighthouse lovers in every state and 13 nations are members of the U.S. Lighthouse Society. They include Walter Fanning, the group’s 80-year-old vice president, who was born in a lighthouse, and Connie Small, 87, an ex-lighthouse keeper’s wife who wrote the book “Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife.”

For $20 a year dues, members receive the Keeper’s Log, a magazine filled with features, photographs, sketches and historic accounts about lighthouses and those who staff them. Each issue of the Log carries stories about famous lighthouses, like America’s first lighthouse: Little Brewster Island, erected in 1716 in Boston and blown up by the British in 1786. America’s first keeper, George Worthylake, drowned two years after the lighthouse was built, a fate remembered over the years by scores of keepers in storms and in rescue attempts.

The Lighthouse Society headquarters--on the fifth floor of a downtown San Francisco building at 244 Kearny St.--is a museum of lighthouse artifacts, photographs and information about lighthouses.

The Lighthouse Society sponsors an annual fog-calling contest and photography contests and works tirelessly for the preservation and restoration of lighthouses throughout America.

The society owns the 128-foot lightship Relief, one of the last of the Coast Guard relics that served as floating lighthouses.