Centennial Sheds Light on the Past

The Coast Guard chief boatswain’s mate who escorted members of the media Friday to the top of the Point Loma Lighthouse appeared trim and physically fit. It’s a good thing.

Climbing the 75 steps up the lighthouse’s enclosed spiral staircase, which is almost as winding and narrow as it is high, and then 10 rungs up an outdoor ladder to the lighthouse’s upper catwalk is something of a physical accomplishment when done once.

But, as the head of San Diego’s Aide to Navigation Team--Coast Guard terminology for lighthouse keeper--it was Chief Dale Dempsey’s job to escort each media visitor who turned up Friday, the day before the Point Loma Lighthouse’s 100th anniversary of continuous operation. And almost no one turned up at the same time, he said.

For the media, however, the climb promised what is undoubtedly one of the finest and rarest possible views of San Diego Bay. Fine because, from the lighthouse’s outdoor catwalk almost nine stories above the sea, it affords an unobstructed southern view of the bay and rare because it is normally off limits to non-Coast Guard and Naval personnel.

Nevertheless, the ever-present light and the foghorn that bellows twice each minute whenever a certain level of moisture is detected in the air within 2 miles of the structure make romantic nights difficult to obtain for the three Coast Guard families living near the foot of the lighthouse, Dempsey said.

Nevertheless, the lighthouse area is “probably the nicest piece of real estate in San Diego,” he said.

The New Point Loma Lighthouse was erected on the southern extremity of Point Loma in 1891 as a replacement for the historic lighthouse a short distance away. At 462 feet above the sea, the latter’s light was often obscured by fog. After many letters of complaint from San Diego’s growing business community, the new lighthouse was constructed at only 88 feet above the sea, which is usually well below the fog line, Dempsey said.

The fixed, 1,000-watt lamp, complete with Fresnel lenses that rotate around the lamp, gives off a light that can be seen 23 miles away.

The historic lighthouse fell victim to vandalism until the National Park Service took over the monument in 1933.

Sitting in the sun, overlooking the waves that crash against the rocks beneath the lighthouse, retired Coast Guard Chief Radford Franke, 83, told what it was like to be a lighthouse keeper and buoy attendant, jobs he relished at both Ano Nuevo Island and Ballast Point, on the eastern shore of

Point Loma.

“I started out when I was 18 years old and it was really the only job I knew,” he said.

Franke said he was a Lighthouse Service attendant and became a third-class petty officer when the service merged with the Coast Guard in 1939. He said his most memorable night as a lighthouse keeper and buoy attendant came on Dec. 7, 1941, the night Pearl Harbor was attacked.

Most lights in San Diego were ordered out, including those in the lighthouse and the nearby buoys, Franke said. Besides extinguishing the buoy’s gas lights, Franke said, he was assigned to cover the whistle-emitting buoys with burlap sacks so their sounds could not be heard by enemy ships.

“It was frightening,” he said. “I could imagine that Japanese submarines were all around me. But, of course, I made it back safely.”

Still, he said he will always take an interest in the lighthouses that remain operational. His old lighthouse, at Ballast Point, was taken apart, although a light still exists there for navigational purposes.

“We never thought that (lighthouses) would become obsolete, but electronics and everything has done that,” he said. “It’s a shame no one takes these things over.”