Maine the way we want to see it

“It is my desire to photograph my interpretations of the area in order to preserve and share my emotion, my art and my life. Others will sense what I experience, if only through my photographs. Only time will tell how successful my intentions will be.”

Tom Szelog penned those words on Oct. 28, 1989, 24 days after he and his wife, Lee Ann, moved into the keeper’s house at the Marshall Point Light in Port Clyde. That this event was meant to happen is indicated by the fact that two years before, the couple had spent their second date visiting lighthouses along Maine’s southern coast.

The Marshall Point Light was automated in 1971. That abrogated a need for the Coast Guard to provide on-scene keepers, a duty it had inherited in 1939 when the old Lighthouse Service was discontinued.

The town of St. George obtained its first lease of the property in 1980 when the Coast Guard closed the Long Range Aids to Navigation station there. The lease was renewed in 1988, and in 1998 ownership was transferred to the town. For almost the next 14 years, the Szelogs rented the second-floor apartment from the town. In 1990 the Marshall Point Lighthouse Museum opened on the first floor of the keeper’s house.

Since the lights and their accompanying foghorns are still maintained by the Coast Guard there, those living in the old keeper’s houses have little to do with the day-to-day operation. If the light goes out, they call the Coast Guard, which sends the Aids to Navigation team to put it back in shape. The Szelogs, however, voluntarily assisted by sweeping the staircase up to the light and polishing the lens as well as resetting the foghorn and attempting to relight the lamp on occasion.

Not only has Tom Szelog, a professional photographer who

specializes in wildlife and nature subjects, created a book filled with pictures of uncommon beauty – “Our Point of View” – but the short explanations that accompany, often no more than a paragraph, expound on the image and open a window into the lives of those taking part.

There is so much of life that is documented in the book. You may think of a lighthouse as being at the end of a world, but really, it’s in the middle of its own world. Because of the beauty of setting, the Szelogs were spectators to a steady parade of people who visited the lighthouse for their own purposes. They witnessed the gamut of human emotions from the joy of marriages and christenings to the sadness of farewell as the ashes of a loved one were committed to the recurring tide.

One lighthouse moment could be added to the many accounts of Sept. 11, 2001. There were people from Coast Guard Group Southwest Harbor working on the light when the phone rang in the keeper’s house at 10 a.m. The guardsmen were directed to call Group Command. They were ordered to remove their uniforms, don civilian clothing, grab their weapons and return to their base.

The Szelogs quickly discovered the rhythm of living near the sea. There were storms, sunsets, schooners sailing past their front window, shipwrecks and the inevitable parade of wildlife from seabirds to whales. Winter days of 11 below zero were followed by days of sun and soft summer breezes. As Tom Szelog put it, “After Mother Nature lashes us with her fury, she anoints us with her peace and tranquility.”

They met Marion Dalrymple and Eula Kelley, whose father had been keeper of the light for 50 years. Marion was born there. Eula had her appendix out as a child in the parlor. As she was recovering, the local fishermen would stop their engines as they neared the point and row so as not to wake the sleeping child.

“Our Point of View” could be characterized as a “coffee-table book,” but that would be to oversimplify. Books of that class you look at once and say, “What nice pictures,” and they usually wind up in the next yard sale. This book, because it shows Maine the way we want to see it, is something to be kept and perused at least once a year, maybe New Year’s Day, to remind ourselves that we really do live in a breathtakingly beautiful state. Better yet, send a copy to an out-of-state friend to show what the coast of Maine, its people and its wildlife are all about. In their quest to “preserve and share,” Tom and Lee Ann Szelog have been amazingly successful.