“You’d be amazed how many of my friends have called me asking if I’d like some company since I agreed to take on this job.”
And with the Historical Society owning the property, no real estate taxes. You can see all the way to the horizon in every direction-three ways out across the ocean and the fourth to the road leading to downtown Montauk and the Hamptons. The hill upon which it sits is 100 feet above the rocks. “Could I come up and visit you? Maybe we could have dinner sometime.” They come here occasionally from their headquarters on Star Island, about six miles away.” AT&T will be doing work there and also the Coast Guard, which, by contract, now maintains the light. There is old electric wiring, which we have to replace. It hasn’t been much modified since about 1850. “Are there fireplaces there?” Montauk Lighthouse Keeper Joe Gaviola at his new home, Photo: Dan Rattiner My time is my own since my divorce, and especially since Suffolk Bancorp was taken over by People’s United Bank last year.” I know its history, was active in the effort of the Montauk Historical Society in buying it from the Coast Guard in 1987. I get a thrill every time I go up the hill to it. This will be a dream for me, living at the lighthouse. Sometimes people come on the grounds who have no business there. There are valuable historic documents at the Lighthouse. Though it is all automated now, at night when no one is around, someone has to be there. You can’t leave the lighthouse unattended. “The job just came up when Marge left,” he told me. Offices were at 250 Park Avenue in Manhattan. And before that he ran Inspiration Resources, a company with interests in the mining business. For the past six years he has been the Chairman of the Board of Suffolk Bancorp in Riverhead. He is retiring from the corporate world, where he was an investment advisor and corporate executive. The new Lighthouse Keeper, who will be living out there alone, is 61-year-old Joe Gaviola, an ardent fisherman and businessman. A woman named Marge Winski has been the Lighthouse Keeper, living on that second floor, for the last 31 years, but she is now moving to Maine. This month, a new Lighthouse Keeper is taking over the job out there. I did finally get a letter from his son, who told me his dad had become a recluse and was out of contact with everyone. I wrote him letters, but he never answered any of them. Since he was no longer using the camp, I thought I’d like to buy it and make the two properties one.
I was told he had retired from GE and was living in Stuart, Florida. Miller continued to come out to the camp for his vacation for about 10 more years. Then maybe another weekend toward the end of summer. He only came down to this fishing camp for two weeks in the summer, his summer vacation. He worked for GE in Syracuse when I met him, which is why I hadn’t seen him around. He’d grown up there, was home-schooled by his mom and went off to college to study engineering. Miller, had been the Lighthouse Keeper, and his mother gave birth to him out there in 1921. I found him very quiet and mild mannered. He was Jonathan Miller, about 50 years old at that time. I waved to him to say hello and we met at the hedge. No one seemed to be living in the other fishing camp, but one day I spotted a man mowing the lawn there. When I bought my house in East Hampton in 1977, it was one of two fishing camps side-by-side on two separate pieces of property. I may have met the last person actually born in the Lighthouse. Being the Lighthouse Keeper was a government position. Supplies in those early days came out by horse and wagon. There are two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen. Living quarters for the keeper and his family are in a separate building attached to the tower. And that’s where most of the keeper’s business has to be done. It’s 120 steps up the octagon stone tower to the top. Eventually, Jared did take the test and passed it. Jacob had wanted to turn the job over to his son, Jared, without his son taking any competitive exam. Jacob Hand was reprimanded by Thomas Jefferson in the early 1800s. There was also the foghorn to maintain and sound when necessary. He also had to replenish the whale oil that lit the lens of the light in the tower when the time came and every week he needed to wind the mechanism that turned the light around. But somebody had to be there to aid any mariners in distress, provide shelter, food and water for them and get help. The first Lighthouse Keeper was Jacob Hand of East Hampton.
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