| To Preserve: This Year in Preservation |
| by Anne Puppa |
| Last year was a very good year for our
preservation program and 1999 is a year filled with potential. We have
an ambitious list of things to do. We hope to complete the Ft.
Washington project. We would like to finish a few lenses at the Coast
Guard exhibit center. We need to complete the organization of files at
the Coast Guard Archives and we want to continue our help with the Lightship
Chesapeake and the Seven Foot
Knoll Light. We will start looking for the next land-based project
and we may begin working with the Coast Guard on the maintenance of Thomas
Point. We still have a significant amount of work left to do at Ft.
Washington. There is a lot of wood that still needs to be replaced and
then we need to finish painting it. It would be nice to get most of it
done at our first work day on April 10th. Think of it as a Christmas in
April project. At the exhibit center there are a lot of lenses there
that are still gathering dust folks! They should be in museums or in light
towers. Joe Kiebish has made a lot of progress at the Coast Guard Archives
but we need to continue that work and hopefully move on to the next phase
of the project. The work we have done on the Lightship Chesapeake and Seven
Foot Knoll light has been fun and rewarding. The little work we did on
the lighthouse made quite a difference. We have had an additional request
for assistance from our volunteers since my list went out. The request
comes from a new chapter member who is an interpreter for the Lightship
Portsmouth. For those of you who live in the Hampton Roads area and
have been waiting for just the right opportunity, here it is. They could
use help every other weekend. If you haven’t visited this lightship, you
should. They have taken a lot of pride in maintaining it and have a wonderful
display. If there is anyone in that area who would like to spend time keeping
the lightship history alive, they could use your help. Just let me know
if you are interested and I will put you in touch with the right people.
Up north, there is a need for volunteers at the Concord
Point Light. The Friends of Concord Point have maintained the lighthouse
and they are working on the restoration of the Keepers house. Volunteers
would help open the light for the public and give visitors information
on the history of the area and the lighthouse. They need a few dedicated
folks to help out and commit some weekend time. Our first two project dates
have now passed. A group of six volunteers worked on the Seven Foot Knoll
Lighthouse up in Baltimore’s Inner
Harbor. They prepared one of the rooms there for a new display. The
museum found some of the old machinery used to rotate a lens when they
cleared out some of the storage area on the lightship. They cleaned it
up and are putting the still working device on display. Our volunteers
helped set that up. Another group of four worked at the Exhibit Center
on some of the lenses there. The projects we have begun are worthwhile
and we can be proud of the work we have done so far. But all these projects
require one main ingredient, enthusiastic volunteers. I have sent out the
registration forms for the years activities as they stand now. There were
five projects listed with over 30 dates to choose from. So far registration
has been disappointing, so if you are still thinking about it, please drag
out the list and commit to something. If you don’t do it now, you probably
won’t do it at all. Thanks very much to those who have taken the time to
sign up. I see some familiar names! If you have not returned a registration
form, you are not registered for anything. The goals for the year are
ambitious, and in order to achieve them we need a few more people to commit
a little bit of their time to make them a reality. Our more ambitious projects
will depend on having many dedicated individuals with diverse talents.
At our November meeting we met several people who have committed a great
deal of time to saving our lighthouse heritage.
We all enjoy the benefit of their hard work and I would like to see our
chapter become one of the driving forces in preservation of lighthouses
in this region. We all share a similar love of lighthouses and what they
stand for. We have the support of the USLHS
and we have an enthusiastic core of volunteers, so lets get out there and
have a successful year of preservation.
Special Thanks to the following volunteers: Seven Foot Knoll:
Coast Guard Exhibit Center:
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2001(c)
Chesapeake Chapter, USLHS. All rights reserved.
