Dick Smith calls it a labor of love. Dick Moehl says he got involved because "nobody else was gonna do it."
"It" is the preservation of old lighthouses. The two men are part of a growing movement to preserve the historic towers and lights that dot the shorelines of Michigan, whose 75 operating lighthouses give it the most of any state."I guess everybody can be classified as a lover of lighthouses," says Moehl, an Ann Arbor businessman. "It's where the land meets the sea. . . . There are so many ways a lighthouse conjures up good, strong images."
Moehl is president of the Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association, which was formed in 1983 to help protect the 366 lighthouses on the Great Lakes. Smith heads a group that cares for the Big Sable Point lighthouse near Ludington, Mich.
Great Lakes lighthouses guard harbor breakwalls, islands, shorelines and reefs or shoals far from any land. Some are more than a century old; virtually all were built in an era when lighthouse keepers were needed around the clock to maintain the lantern fires.
The lights, automated decades ago, are still important aids to navigation. But the buildings are relics of that bygone day.
The U.S. Coast Guard takes care of the switching equipment but often lacks funds to maintain the buildings, says Frank Jennings, a spokesman at Coast Guard district headquarters in Cleveland.
The Big Sable Point light and the St. Helena Island light that Moehl's group is restoring are among many that have been leased to private organizations, Jennings says. The organizations maintain and use the buildings, and the Coast Guard visits as often as necessary to maintain the equipment.
Some others have been sold outright. Several are museums; at least one, at Big Bay in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, is a bed and breakfast inn; a few, like the Grand Traverse Light at Northport, are within state or local parks.
Many - particularly those on shoals and breakwalls - remain in the federal government's hands. And that troubles Moehl and other preservationists.
"The Coast Guard is not prepared to spend any money maintaining the dwellings," Moehl says. "The Coast Guard doesn't have the training, and it doesn't have the budget."
He has proposed that the Coast Guard place the buildings in the care of the National Park Service.
His group also is developing a curriculum to help schools and youth groups study the history of Great Lakes lighthouses. He figures that could go a long way toward preserving interest in the structures.
"If you can get the kids involved," he says, "the parents come along free."