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We are sad to report on the passing on September 14, 2018 of former lighthouse keeper Paul J. Baptiste, 94, who was a lighthouse keeper at Bakers Island Lighthouse in Massachusetts from 1946 to 1951, and at Maine’s Monhegan Island Lighthouse from 1952 until 1954. He also did short stints as a relief keeper at Deer Island Lighthouse in Massachusetts, Conimicut Lighthouse in Rhode Island, and as an assistant keeper at Watch Hill Lighthouse in Rhode Island.
Paul and his wife Helen, who died in 2013, had nine children, and they often commented that some of the best years of their lives together were living at the lighthouses. Our editor, Tim Harrison, recalled, “They were both wonderful people who were always jovial and had smiles on their faces. Over the years, we always enjoyed their visits with us in Maine and their attendance at numerous lighthouse events along with the many memories that they loved to share with us.
“Our sincere condolences go out to Paul’s nine children, 22 grandchildren, 22 great grandchildren, one great-great-grandchild, and his many friends.”
With Paul’s passing, another vestige of the first-hand memories of lighthouse life has now slipped away, proving once again that we are now at a crossroads in saving lighthouse history for future generations, and why it is important to record and document as much as we can now, before it’s too late. Because of this, we are sharing some of Paul’s and Helen’s memories and photos of their family’s life at the lighthouses, a way of life in history that can never again be repeated or even replicated.
The Early Years
Paul grew up in a Catholic household in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Sunday mass attendance was mandatory. He attended St. Mary’s Catholic School where his future wife Helen Dilworth also attended. One Saturday morning he delivered a newspaper to the Dilworth’s home, and when young Helen answered the door, she said, “My mother doesn’t have any money today,” to which eleven-year-old Paul replied, “Alright, I’ll settle for a kiss!” The innocent kiss from 10-year-old Helen was worth more than the two-cent paper, and the bud of a romance began to bloom that day. Paul recalled, “I knew I was going to marry her by the time I was thirteen years old.”
Joining the Coast Guard
In 1942, at age 17, Paul Baptiste joined the United States Coast Guard and was sent to Boot Camp training on Manhattan Beach in New York. Upon return from his eight weeks of training, he began his career at the Boston Harbor Coast Guard Station. Soon he and Helen began to speak of marriage and a life together. Eighteen-year-old Paul and seventeen-year-old Helen married on February 28, 1943 with blessings from both parents. Their first of nine children was born while he was serving at a weather station in Greenland.
Once his service obligation ended, Paul tried civilian life for a few months, but jobs were scarce, so he decided to reenlist. A fellow guardsman suggested that Paul find out about lighthouse keeper assignments. Paul submitted his request to become a lighthouse keeper, and he was given a choice of assignments: either serve as an assistant lighthouse keeper at Boston Harbor Light on Little Brewster Island or Baker’s Island Light in Salem, Massachusetts. Little Brewster Island was only about three acres of land consisting of granite ledges surrounded by rough seas. Baker’s Island was at the entrance to the main shipping channel into Salem Harbor, and the 55 acres included some small ponds, as well as areas of trees and shrubs and was much better suited for a family - now with three small boys – it was a logical choice.
The Lighthouse Years
Paul and Helen moved their growing family into the Assistant Lighthouse Keeper’s house on Baker’s Island in 1947. The Coast Guard maintained eleven acres of the island, which included the keeper and assistant keeper homes, the lighthouse, and the fog signal. There were and still are a number of summer homes on the island, but the lighthouse personnel stayed year-round.
After settling the children into their new beds that first night, Paul and Helen took a walk down to the boat house. They soon had an introduction to life out at sea. “We saw a water spout coming right at us, and being young and naïve we just stood and watched. Fortunately, the water tornado dispersed before it hit the island.” During their stay on the island, they saw several more water tornados. These tornados would suck up sea water and create a large water spout, but the Baptistes never saw one reach the island.
Paul and Helen got along just fine with Bill Johnson, the head keeper, and his wife, also named Helen. Bill and Paul’s responsibilities included tending to four big diesels (two for the light and two for the foghorns). The brass needed to be polished and the lens needed to be cleaned on a regular basis. The windows surrounding the light had to be kept clean all year round. Air pressure pumped up the kerosene fuel used to power the light. In the colder months, glycerin was added to the glass-cleaning water to prevent the water from freezing. Very soon, it became apparent to Paul that lighthouse keepers were expected to have many skills to maintain the light, the fog signal, and all the buildings. If they didn’t have the skills, they were soon acquired through necessity.
Paul recalls the night that he was asked to assist one of the summer residents, and it is best heard through his own words. “It was the beginning of the season on Bakers Island, and the summer people came over by boat from Salem to open up their cottages on a Friday afternoon. Then Sunday afternoon they all went home, except Pop Long and Mrs. Long. Well, that evening Helen and I had gone to bed. I heard some knocking on the back door. I went down and there’s Pop standing there and I asked him ‘What’s the matter?’ And He says, ‘My woman, she won’t get up off the floor.’ And I think My God! I called Helen down and she brought him in to the kitchen and made him a nice cup of tea. I said, ‘I’ll go down and check on Mrs. Long’. So, I woke up the other Coast Guardsman and he said, ‘I’ll stay down here and you go check on her.’ You got to remember this island is a summer resort and there’s no electricity down there. We generated electricity up at the lighthouse, see? I took the jeep and I get down to their cottage and I go in and you can see the (kerosene lamp) light flickering on the second floor. It’s pitch black (downstairs). It’s a summer cottage so the stairway is really narrow and I crawl up the stairs and I’m even with the floor and there’s Mrs. Long on the floor covered with a sheet with a pillow under her head. I say ‘Mrs. Long. Please Mrs. Long.’ Mrs. Long ain’t moving, so I crawl over and put my head down on her chest. No heartbeat – she’s dead! Oh, my God. The worst time for the telephone cable to the island to be broken. It had broken in a storm a couple of weeks before. So, we have no communication with the mainland, see? So, being a good Coast Guarder, I notified the head keeper – I’m only the assistant.
“The keeper helped me launch the boat to go over to Manchester. I had to go ashore and I asked to speak to the OD (Officer on Duty). The kid said, ‘He’s sleeping Paul’ and I said ‘So what, I’m not. We have a dead lady on the island.’ So, the kid woke up the OD on the Air Base. ‘You’ve got to help me. We have a dead lady on the island and I have the family’s telephone number. I got to call them and get her doctor over there ‘cause I can’t declare her dead - I don’t have the authority.’ By the time I got back to the Island the boat from Salem Air base was getting there with the family and the doctor.
“I went down and met the family at the dock. The two Coast Guardsmen from the air base brought some line (rope) and the doctor and the girl (daughter), came ashore. She went right up to the Coast Guard station (Keeper’s Cottage) to be with her father. She didn’t go into the (her parent’s) cottage. The doctor declared her (Mrs. Long) dead but by now rigor mortis had set in. Geez! So, there was a straight back chair in the bedroom and we picked up the body and put her on this chair. The Coast Guardsman tied her to the chair. The last thing the doctor did was take a loop (of the line) and looped it around her neck to the chair. The Guardsmen - I think they were going to pass out - just young kids. But it was the only way we could get her down the stairs passing her slowly from Guardsman to Guardsman.” Paul recalled that everyone was relieved when the Guardsmen reached the bottom and gently set Pop’s wife down.
The Baptiste family was stationed at Baker’s Island Lighthouse during the days when lighthouse historian Edward Rowe Snow was the Flying Santa who dropped Christmas presents to the families of the lighthouse keepers. One year, Paul and his children wrote out “Hello Santa” with coal bags and sticks so that the Flying Santa wouldn’t miss them. Snow’s photo from above was later published and made Bakers Island Lighthouse quite famous.
In 1952, the family moved to Maine to take over the Monhegan Island Lighthouse, a position that Paul had applied for. Monhegan Island was different than Bakers Island. Although many tourists would arrive in the summer months, there was also a small year-round population. The island had a church, a store, a one-room school house, and a mail boat that also brought supplies on a regular basis.
The keeper’s house at Monhegan Island had a water pump at the kitchen sink that required priming to get the pump suction process working. There was a crank telephone on the wall and a certain number of rings would bring assistance: 1 ring for the telephone operator, 2 rings for the Marshall Point Lighthouse, 3 rings for the Life Boat Station, and 5 rings for the nearby Manana Fog Signal Station.
The outhouse was halfway down the wooden walkway from the house to the lighthouse tower. A big wash-bucket kept in the kitchen was filled with water for the family baths, and the water was heated on the coal cook stove. There was another coal stove in the furnace room that kept the heat flowing through the radiators in the house. A storage room on the second floor was later renovated into a bathroom, and a compressor was installed to force the water to pump up to the bathroom.
There was no electricity in the keeper’s house; light was provided by Aladin kerosene lamps. A Coast Guard officer, on a routine visit to the island, asked Helen what would make her life easier and she replied by asking, “Can’t we get some electricity here?” On the officer’s next visit, he left her two flash light batteries so she could produce her own electricity. “Helen was pretty put out by this,” said Paul. He then decided to ask if he could hook up electricity for the house by using the “110 DC current” generator being used for the water pump. Given the okay, Paul soon had the first floor of the house electrified, making Helen quite happy. She had been doing the family wash by hand, but with electricity now available, a washing machine was also purchased. Paul also switched the light in the lighthouse from kerosene to electricity.
The family, now expanded to six, settled into island life. The three older children attended the one-room school house, along with six other children, ranging in age from first grade through eighth grade. The schoolhouse was also used for dances to Big Band music every Saturday night during the summer. No alcohol was allowed, but there were many bottles hidden under bushes for those moments when folks needed to take a break from the dancing and “get a breath of fresh sea air.”
The one church on the island was a non-denominational protestant church. Pastor Gertrude Anderson never did get Paul to attend church, but his children were not bothered that the church was not catholic. Paul took over the lighting of the wood stove on Sunday mornings for the church services while the island men were out lobstering on the weekends from January 1st through June 30th. “I’d get that church nice and warm and Pastor Anderson would complain that ‘It’s hot in here’ and I told her ‘This is so you’ll know what Hell is going to be like when you get there.’ And she says, ‘Of all the Islanders you’re the one who should be coming for services’ – ‘I can’t come to your church – I’m a Catholic.’” A Catholic Priest once visited the island and he asked Paul “What do you do for the children for church?” Paul replied, “I send them to the Protestant church. They are young, they don’t know any better.”
In 1954, Paul Baptiste was reassigned as an assistant keeper at Watch Hill Lighthouse in Rhode Island. At Watch Hill Lighthouse, the assistant keeper’s quarters consisted of two rooms over the head keeper’s 1st floor living quarters, and the only entrance was through the head keeper’s living room, up a steep flight of stairs. Obviously Helen and Paul were upset with these living conditions for a family with five children, and after a few months Helen moved the family into a housing project in Cambridge. Although the family was only an hour away, this was too far for Paul. He missed his family, so his stint at Watch Hill lasted less than a year.
Back to Sea
Paul gave up lighthouse keeping and went out to sea. His home base was the Boston Coast Guard Station, but his assignments took him out on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Unimak #379, a 311-foot weather station cutter.
Paul would be gone for five-week intervals and be in port for five weeks, assigned to the Boston station. While at sea, he served as a diesel mechanic in the engine room, down at the bottom of the ship, along with his chief, Bud O’Conner. “We went through a hurricane together. Not an experience I want to go through again.”
Life after the Coast Guard
After his sea duty, Paul was assigned to the Hampton Beach Coast Guard Station. The family enjoyed living in Hampton, and Paul and Helen loved their newly purchased home. Hampton offered good schools and lots of entertainment at the Rockingham Ballroom in Newmarket or at the Shell on Hampton Beach. Helen loved to dance, so she and Paul would often go to the Rockingham Ballroom with friends for an evening of dancing. “I loved Helen, so I danced.”
Paul decided to retire from the Coast Guard in 1962, after 20 years. His chief offered him a promotion although it would require two more years of sea duty, but Paul had had enough. He wanted to be with his family.
After his retirement, he joined the Hampton Police force and worked at the Hampton Beach station. In 1972, Paul left the police force for a job as a mechanic at a marina. It was here that he was injured in an explosion that sent him to the hospital. He then moved on and in 1975 he went to work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and stayed there until he retired.
On February 28, 2013, Paul and Helen Baptiste celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. Sadly, that same year Helen passed away. Paul said, “We had a wonderful marriage. Helen was always my girlfriend.”
This story appeared in the
Nov/Dec 2018 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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