A little light goes a long way

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday November 10th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next: lighthouse life. There’s just something about a lighthouse that captures the imagination. Its rugged beauty. Its noble purpose. Its place in history.

BROWN: Maybe all three. The rocky coastline of Maine is home to at least 60 lighthouses, many of them open to the public. Some even offer access to the keeper’s quarters.

EICHER: As part of our ongoing series “What Do People Do All Day,” WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson takes us to meet a pair of lighthouse keepers.

KIM HENDERSON, SENIOR WRITER: The only way to reach Goat Island is by boat.

SOUND: [Boat cranks and takes off]

The island is small, about 3 and half acres. It’s within sight of the shore at Kennebunkport, Maine.

SCOTT DOMBROWSKI: So it was very common to have up to 400 boats come in.

That’s Scott Dombrowski. He and his wife, Karen, are the keepers of the Goat Island light station. It’s a job they’ve had for 30 years.

SCOTT: Oh, we're getting greeted by the keeper’s puppy. All right. Good morning. Another great day to be alive.

As Scott steps from the boat onto the pier, the light station behind him comes into view. A gleaming white, 3-story lighthouse towers over several outbuildings. The Dombrowskis live in the keeper’s house 8 months out of the year.

They raised their two sons on the island. Karen says their unique lifestyle formed a strong work ethic in her boys. Matured them, too.

KAREN: The kids were allowed to take the boat out and go fishing when they were 10. And I had a whistle, and I would blow the whistle. And if they heard the whistle, they had to come in no matter what, my word was law because it wasn't safe.

The lighthouse has been keeping sailors safe since 1833. These days, the Coast Guard maintains the light. A private group known as the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust is responsible for everything else on the island. It’s like a living history museum. Scott and Karen are the tour guides.

A lot of visitors arrive by kayak.

SCOTT: They're out exploring the archipelago. And they know that Goat Island is available for people to come and visit us anytime. If we're here, the tower is open, but you can always come out and picnic and explore the tidal pools.

Keepers of historic properties have to be very hospitable.

SCOTT: Yeah, by the end of the season, it's like, ah, do I need to tell another story? (laughs)

Most visitors are drawn to the lighthouse. When they climb the winding steps to the top, they’re surprised by the size of the light itself. Less than a foot in diameter.

SCOTT: That’s the modern lighthouse light. That's an LED light, the first LED light put in Maine. And it was a $40,000 light bulb. A lot of people will come and say, “Well, that's not very bright.” Well, it isn't here. Because think of what a lens does. It bends the light and it focuses it somewhere else. This is focused about 12 miles out.

The Dombrowskis do more than just give tours. They also cut the grass. Keep the boats working. Clean up after storms.

SCOTT: It's kind of like living on a small farm. You're always pushing, pulling, hauling, moving, painting. You know, it just never ends. You never catch up.

The Kennebunkport Conservation Trust has a diary from one of the keepers from the 1860s. Old photos, too. When the historic preservation experts wanted to renovate the keeper’s house in the style of a specific era, the Dombrowskis picked the 1950s. They had a photograph to go by.

SCOTT: We have a picture of the keeper that we used to copy the kitchen. She was standing here. She was 19. And she was back a few years ago and we got a picture of her in the same corner.

Scott says it’s like living in a big history puzzle. You can certainly sense that in the boat house.

SCOTT: What's unique about this, I heard Karen say it, is the fact that the building’s still here, because there have been many different times that we've had storms, and I've seen this building completely surrounded by water. So whoever built it did a good job pinning it to the bedrock.

But the Dombrowskis have to keep a foot in the modern world, too. For many years, Scott had a conventional job.

SCOTT: So it was an adventure every morning, pushing the boat down and, you know, getting to meet and greet the fishermen and lobstermen as I went in.

The month of August presented a problem for Scott’s commute. The tide is especially low.

SCOTT: So I would have to go in shorts and rubber boots and I'd have my starched shirt on and I'd have a briefcase with my pants in it. And I'd have to go schlepping across the mud flats.

School meant an aquatic commute for the Dombrowski boys as well.

KAREN: When they got old enough, we just put them on the boat and they’d take themselves in. We’d, you know, get the binoculars and watch them go in. “Okay, they're on the bus.” All right.

But those days are long gone. The Dombrowskis still host lobster bakes and campouts. They still get what Karen calls “deliveries.” Pieces of wood washed up on shore that they use in fires.

But the couple is in their 60s now. They’ve started allowing some members of the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust to have “trial runs” as keepers for part of the season. They know it will take someone special to replace them.

SCOTT: We have about nine young local families that we're teaching how to keep the light and how to give the tours, all the different things that come with living out here.

For now, the Dombrowskis keep doing what they do best. Even on our boat ride back, Scott stops and offers some sailors an invitation.

SCOTT: If you want to go over to the lighthouse, it's open and, you know, wander around. It's a pretty cool spot. So, but yeah, you just got like three hours either side of a high tide that's easily accessible.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Kennebunkport, Maine.

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