THE RESURRECTION

The lighthouse and keeper’s residence had been left to die. It wasn’t that people hadn’t cared. In fact, they did care. There just wasn’t one cataclysmic event to shake their earth. Until that is, an event occurred and when it did an entire mountain was moved. The landscape changed forever the face of the mountain. But it would take a community and a Congressman to clear the debris from the mountain moved. When this happened they paved a way for a resurrection to occur.

Marblehead lighthouse was slated to be changed. The government’s plan was to remove it and replace it with a metal tower and a small flashing light. The keeper’s residence was to be torn down and removed from the property. Nothing would be left, except an empty landscape and a vacant lot. It would be replaced by only memories and scrapbooks filled with pictures. These would neither fill the vacant property or the void in a community left to ponder its previous existence.

When the plans were announced a ground swelling reaction occurred among the local people. It was unthinkable and unforgivable to tear down a structure which had stood in the same place for more then one hundred years. The lighthouse was saved from the burning stake, but the keeper’s residence would not. Until that is, a descendant of one of the early keepers born of the soul that jumps into the raging waters to save the drowning, did just that. The night before the destruction of the residence was to begin he enlisted the help of a Congressman. The Congressman intervened and obtained an injunction to stop the dismantling. The keeper’s residence was saved from the same fate as the lighthouse. Now the resurrection could take place. Not only was it a resurrection, but it became a symbol of what they in the community stood for and what it stood for them. It was a reflection of their own image and that image had been in existence ever since the first lighthouse keeper Benjamin Wolcott had tended the light and lives had been saved.

Now, on this trip I was made a part of that image. I was very humbled. I had done nothing-saved no lives, rescued no boats and certainly had not been involved in the community. That did not matter. I was the great niece of the last lighthouse keeper. I walked with Edward and the lighthouse was mine too. It was so evident in the way the community opened their hearts, history, and homes to share their stories with me. I had returned. I had come home.