DATE: Saturday, July 19, 1997               TAG: 9707190307

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY JENNIFER LANGSTON, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  104 lines

AUTHOR EXPLORES LIVES OF LIGHTHOUSE FAMILIES

Rany Jennette remembers growing up at Cape Hatteras lighthouse, building wagons out of beached lumber and fenders out of tin cans.

Wayland Baum can recall tumbling off a outdoor platform - where his family kept potatoes, watermelons and live chickens - into the cold waters of the Long Shoal River.

John Gaskill has never forgotten packing up during the holidays to visit his father at the Bodie Island lighthouse in the 1920s.

``Christmas was just another time we sometimes went to Bodie Island to all be together. I don't remember a tree or anything. And there weren't many gifts. We were just together,'' he said.

While conservation groups work to save lighthouse structures threatened by erosion and decay, author Cheryl Shelton-Roberts has preserved a different kind of history.

She gathered the stories and memories of families who lived at lighthouses in the early part of this century. The fruit of her labor is a book, ``Lighthouse Families,'' to be released at the end of this month.

In her work as founder of the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society, Shelton-Roberts, 46, met plenty of ``bricks and mortar'' experts. They could rattle off the dates lighthouses were built, the height of the towers and the power of the lenses.

But she found few details that made the structures come alive. Traces of the families who lived there had faded.

Over the next seven years, Shelton-Roberts sought out surviving members of lighthouse families, whose ages now range from the 60s into the 90s.

``I'm fascinated by these people,'' said Shelton-Roberts, who owns Lighthouse Gallery and Gifts in Nags Head with her husband, Bruce. ``There are some common threads among them - they're independent, they're resourceful, they're humble.''

The 13 families in the book include those who lived in lighthouses at Hatteras and Bodie islands and at Long Shoal and Croatan sounds in North Carolina.

Through interviews and photographs from family albums, the book paints a picture of a culture that has all but vanished in the age of instant communication.

``It was much like a pioneer family,'' Shelton-Roberts said. ``There was no medical help. They had to make up their own games. They had no toys, no TV, no radio. They read from the libraries that were rotated from lighthouse to lighthouse.''

Children also were expected to polish brass, scrub towers and keep watch for the lighthouse inspectors. Their visits and rigorous standards struck fear into the hearts of lighthouse keepers.

``Not a blade of grass could be out of place,'' she said. ``It was much like a visit from God. Their job was in jeopardy if they got bad marks.''

But the families were united in the belief their work served a higher purpose. Baum remembered staying up all night to rekindle the Croatan River light in a wind storm, even though visibility was terrible.

He knew firsthand the benefits of the shining beacons.

``They were the only way I could get my bearings when fog or bad weather set in. If I was out oystering and it was foggy, I would stop my boat's engine and listen for the foghorn from the river light,'' he told Shelton-Roberts. ``You didn't want to lose your way out there in the maze of passages that all look the same.''

Family members were not supposed to stay at river lighthouses. But they frequently visited anyway. When the inspector came, the wives and children hid behind woodpiles in a dark closet. Usually, he turned a blind eye.

But family was an integral part of life at remote coastal lighthouses, where the keeper, his wife and children might not see a fresh face for months.

``Family and a working beacon were the two priorities,'' Shelton-Roberts said. ``All was not perfect, but there was such a sense of security. When the children got up in the morning, they knew what they were going to do. They knew what the priorities were. They knew what their Mother and Dads did.''

That peaceful existence came to an end for most lighthouse families in 1939, when the civilian U.S. Lighthouse Service merged with the Coast Guard. Armed enlisted men were posted at lighthouses to defend the nation's coasts against enemy attack.

The families were moved out, although lighthouse keepers were given an option to join the service. Many declined that lifestyle and worked as fishermen near their former homes.

``There was a clash of cultures. You had the military coming in who were used to being rotated and the lightkeepers who had been at some of the lighthouses for 30 years,'' Shelton-Roberts said.

After being forced to abandon their homes and way of life, surviving family members were reluctant to talk to an outsider at first, Shelton-Roberts said. Many never mentioned their upbringing, even to their own children because of the stigma attached to lighthouse families.

``They were considered loners and in some cases social misfits, which is not true at all,'' she said.

After years of correspondence, they began to open up their photo albums and share the details of their domestic life. Many shared family recipes for pone bread, clabber biscuits and fish cake, which Shelton-Roberts has included in the book.

Shelton-Roberts thinks that by sharing their stories, the family members can add a human side to the towering structures that continue to draw visitors from across the country.

``The pride is coming out now because there's an interest in the social history. They did important work,'' she said. ``I think it helps people look at lighthouses in a different way - not just bricks and mortar.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Drew Wilson

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse

Color photos by William P. Cannon

[Rany Jennette....]

[Cheryl Shelton-Roberts...]

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