John E. Midgett

"The Coastland Times"
Manteo, NC
Thursday, October 29, 1981, pg 6A
"Hatteras Island News;Reporter - Diane Ransom

"John Evans Midgette, Keeper of the Light"

BUXTON -- The day was hot, the air very still. John Evans Midgette sat in his porch swing. Today he wasn't concerned with the heat or the lack of a breeze. He was reliving the past, 61 years ago to be exact. At age 86, John Evans Midgette is one of only two Cape Hatteras Lighthouse assistant keepers still living.
The octogenarian leaned forward in his swing. "You ask the questions and I'll try to tell you what I can," he said hesitantly. But with the first question, Midgette began a detailed commentary of his years with the Lighthouse Service, and few other questions needed to be asked.
His face brightened, the hot day and the painting to be done quickly forgotten. It was 1918 and young John Evans Midgette was celebrating the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. He was aboard a Navy submarine chaser ported at Providence, Rhode Island.
"That was a happy day," he recalled, not knowing at the time that he would serve during yet another war and in another branch of service.
Midgette was in the Lighthouse Service. But on April 11, 1917 certain ships and light stations of the Lighthouse Service were transferred from the Department of Commerce to the jurisdiction of the War Department and subsequently to the Navy Department.
After World War I, the Buxton native went to the buoy yard at Portsmouth, Va. and served as quarter master on a buoy tender at $30 a month. During his career with the Lighthouse Service, which was taken over by the Coast Guard in 1939, he served on several buoy tenders, two lightships and several lighthouses, or light stations.
His first lighthouse duty was at Love Point, Md. Midgette remembered having to walk five or six miles to get his mail and a hair cut after first going ashore in a sail skiff.
Before marrying Oreatha Quidley of Buxton he served on the Cape Henry and Diamond Shoal Lightships. "I was aboard the Diamond Shoals Lightship seven months before going ashore," he recalled.
But his most difficult and isolated duty wasn't on a ship but at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse during the early thirties.
"It was nice being with my family but we only had just a few days liberty and it was very isolated," said Midgette who served as an assistant keeper under Unaka Jennette.
He admired Jennette and remembered the keeper, also a Buxton native, "as a very calm person and good to work for."
"It was the most beautiful place," related the assistant keeper describing the lighthouse site, "with a broad bench and nice ponds. Unaka had a large garden and we kept horses, milk cows, and beef cows. There were hogs in the woods. You could get all the fowl you wanted and plenty of deer."
Ducks were really unlimited in those days. The light attracted fowl and sometimes ducks would fly against the tower. The next morning the lighthouse crew could pick up the dead or stunned fowl from around the tower base.
The families of the keepers played croquet and there was a baseball diamond between the lighthouse and the ocean. Midgette was the pitcher for a team captained by Doc Folb.
Sturdy legs certainly had to be a requirement for the Lighthouse Service, especially for those stationed at Cape Hatteras, the tallest brick lighthouse in the world. A great deal of climbing was done in a day's time.
"Before sunrise," recalled Midgette, "I would climb the lighthouse and put the light out at the top by turning the valve of the mantel lamp. The storm curtains were put up to keep the sun off the lens. Then I would go down for breakfast and then back up to polish all the brass and the lens."
The lamp burner was filled with pure alcohol, and the weights which turned the table on which the lens rested had to be wound. "The amazing part of that lens," said Midgette, "was that it was so big. You had to have a ladder to go inside and you polished the inside and the outside. We also had to keep the dust off.... and during stormy weather someone had to stay in the tower. Not many idle moments," he declared somberly.
But then, once again, his countenance brightened, a smile took form. It was an expression that occurred time and time again as the former lighthouse assistant keeper spoke of past history.
The beauty of the light at night had impressed and left its mark on his memory as had the beauty of the beach and sea tempered by the distant Buxton woods with its age-old oaks. Oaks that at one time supplied wood for sailing vessels.
Possibly some of those vessels made of the island timbers passed the light and felt an affinity with the Cape as well as a sense of security from the light.
"On a dark night it was the most beautiful sight," said Midgette recalling the aesthetics of that light beam that bound man, land, and ship at sea together in a form of dependency thatonly a seafarer can understand.
But the assistant keeper also recalled some humerous events at the lighthouse. "Unaka wanted the lighthouse painted," he related.
"Two or three fellows were sent down to paint it. We hoisted them up in a paint box. Unaka pulled the box with his car," chuckled Midgette, "and he forgot to put the car in gear. That box came down with those boys hollering as the car headed forward toward the light."
If those painters were the same fellows who got into the five-gallon can of pure alcohol and painted the stripes on the tower backward in their inebriation, after such a harrowing experience, their error can be understood.
"Unaka had to fire them and get some more painters," laughed Midgette.
Sportfishing had not come into its own at that time, but commercial fisherman put many a dory into the sea within the shadow of the light, and the lighthouse crew was no exception; they liked to fish.
Midgette, Bill Quidley, who was another assistant keeper, and Jennette, who of course captained the boat since he was the senior man, fished nets off the shore. One such outing almost ended in disaster.
"We were fishing a net and a big breaker got underneath the dory," related Midgette. "I was pulling the fore oar and Bill the aft oar. When we struck the beach I went head over heels and landed on the sand. Unaka hit his head on a thwart, and Bill went over backward between the thwarts and under the water which had filled the boat. My father was on the beach watching us, and said, "I think you boys need a different boat." But Bill replied, "No sir, I think we need a different captain!"
Midgette's wife was in ill health. After he was transferred to Pamlico Point in the Pamlico River her condition became more severe.
"The Coast Guard responded real quickly," remembered the former keeper. A Coast Guard boat transported he, his wife, and two young children, Ronald and Melita, home to Buxton where Miss Oreatha died.
The children remained at Buxton with relatives but Midgette had to continue his service and left for a new duty station. He reported to Smith Point Lighthouse located in the Chesapeake Bay.
"The lighthouse was right in the channel," he recalled. "Big ships came by and one time I thought one was going to run right over us."
Another duty station was at Janes Island in Tangier Sound. He and another crewman had to abandon the lighthouse during a severe freeze. Midgette remembered that he had to tie the lens in the tower to stop it from tumbling over.
"The station was shaking so we were afraid it would go down. I made a sled,put our clothes on it and got a heaving line. We walked apart so that we wouldn't put too much weight in one area of the ice."
They also took a oar so if one fell through the ice the other could reach him with the oar. The men also had a line tied between them.
Rescued by a Coast Guard cutter, the men reached the deck of the cutter by climbing up the anchor. Midgette returned home to Buxton for 30 days leave where he heard over the radio the the lighthouse had toppled over into the sound.
When Midgette left Buxton for his next appointment as assistant keeper at Belhaven he didn't go alone. He was accompanied by his two children and Blanche Farrow, who became his wife.
Miss Blanche had taken care of the Midgette's children while he was away. The couple were married in 1937 and eventually had a daughter, Becky.
"That was the best duty I had in my life," he recalled of his service at Belhaven. "I could be home a lot for I spent eight days at the dock and then eight days at home."
After 30 years and nine months, 22 of those years with the Lighthouse Service and nine years and nine months with the U.S. Coast Guard, Midgette retired and moved back home to Buxton. The year was 1947.
At age 52, tired of working on the water but very glad to be home, the former assistant keeper turned to another line of work, carpentry. He helped build the Buxton Assembly of God parsonage as well as helping to remodel the Buxtonand Avon Assembly of God churches.
Working together, he and Miss Blance built two smaller houses for their daughters next to their own home. "We wanted to keep them with us," reflected Miss Blanche, "but one left anyway."
The Midgettes have seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren. The couple attend the Buxton Assembly of God Church and Miss Blanche writes the Buxton personals for "The Coastland Times".
Midgette still keeps up with what's happening to his old duty station at the Cape. Much has changed there in fifty years.
An electric light was installed after Midgette left the station, and a stronger device was installed in 1972 consisting of of a rotating beacon with two 1,000 watt lamps. Quite a change from the incandescent oil vapor lamp.
Passing ships no longer have an affinity with the high oak ridges beyond the lighthouse. Much of the beach is gone. No one plays baseball or croquet near the tower.
But surfers, fishermen, and millions of sightseers now come to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse where once the Jennette, Midgette, Casey, Fulcher, Austin and countless other children of the keepers and assistant keepers played and called home.
The historic tower has been thought of as an eternal structure not ending its days like the former keepers or other island structures. But time and the Atlantic Ocean have caught up wih the century-old lifesaver and her status is described as endangered.
Living 86 years, John Evans Midgette knows something about the terms endangered and eternal. He would like to see the lighthouse remain eternal. Scuttling ships off the beach is his solution to erosion and the fate of the tower.
If done correctly, according to Midgette, who has been around a long time, the sand would eventually build up between the ships and the present beach. He sees no other solution.
Born and raised within the protection of its beam, Midgette like many other islanders has reaped benefits from the lighthouse. Yet through his years with the Lighthouse Service he has been able to return some.
As keeper of the light which cab be defined as: watchman, ranger, doorman, curator,custodian, preserver, and supporter, John Evans Midgette did a thorough job.
But most important, as keeper of the light, he cared.

Retried for disability on December 31, 1947.