From the Vineyard Gazette:
This is not just a story, it’s a love story.
In 1799 President John Adams commissioned the building of an eight-sided wooden lighthouse which marked the birth of the Gay Head Light. In 1856 the wooden structure was replaced by the brick structure we now know. For 214 years the light guided mariners and fishermen from all over the globe safely past the cliffs of Gay Head and the Devil’s Bridge below. As a young man, I worked the fishing boats out of Newport and New Bedford as well as the weirs and traps off Common Fence Point in Little Compton, R.I. The Gay Head Light was always there to wish us a safe return, a welcome home or a needed point of reference pulling trap when the sea was so high it was the only thing visible above the water.
If you put a coin into the telescope at the Gay Head Cliffs, you will look into the three bedrooms where my wife and I raised our four children to the lullaby of the Gay Head Light. It was their Mother Goose and most effective defense against the boogeyman sneaking up on them. On foggy nights, to reassure them that she wasn’t gone but just out of sight for a bit on a little trip, we told a bedtime story. I can remember standing over them while they slept, checking a fever or just touching their hair, swelling inside to the pulse of the light. Read more…..