The featured interview in this episode is Terry Rowden, a native of Michigan. Bob Trapani, Jr., executive director of the American Lighthouse Foundation, joined Light Hearted host Jeremy D’Entremont to take part in this interview, which was recorded inside the keeper’s house at Little River Light Station.
Terry Rowden served as a keeper at Little River Light Station in Cutler, Maine, for the U.S. Coast Guard from 1968 to 1970. It was then that he met a young Cutler native named Cynthia, and Terry and Cynthia eventually married.
When the Friends of Little River Lighthouse was founded as a chapter of the American Lighthouse Foundation in 2008, Terry became a volunteer. For the past few years, Terry has been the resident caretaker on the island. His wife Cynthia is also a valuable volunteer. At the American Lighthouse Foundation annual gala in 2016, Terry was awarded a President’s Award for his exemplary commitment to the organization’s historic lighthouse preservation mission.
In the history segment, hosts Jeremy D’Entremont and Michelle Jewell Shaw tell the tale of William S. Moore, who became the first keeper of Bird Island Light in Marion, Massachusetts, when the station went into operation in 1819.
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Persistent local legend claims that Moore was a pirate who was banished to Bird Island as punishment. Some accounts also claim that Moore murdered his wife, and there are those who say the island has been haunted or cursed ever since.
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U.S. Lighthouse Society Historian Jeremy D’Entremont is the author of 24 books and hundreds of articles on lighthouses and maritime history. He is a past president of the American Lighthouse Foundation and founder of Friends of Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouses, and he has lectured and narrated cruises throughout the Northeast and in other regions. He is also the producer and host of the U.S. Lighthouse Society’s weekly podcast, “Light Hearted.” He can be emailed at Jeremy@uslhs.org