Mind the Light
It’s a beautiful short story, but if you read it, you might cry . . .
In New York Harbor between Manhattan and Staten Island, there is a sunken shoal called Robbins Reef. There’s not much there, but there is a small lighthouse, that for many years was tended by an elderly widow - Kate Walker. Born Katherine Gortler in Germany, she came to America with her young son after her first husband died young. Settling in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, she met a young man named John Walker, the assistant keeper of the Sandy Hook Lighthouse. They fell in love, married, and spent the early years of their marriage - including the birth of their daughter - happily tending the lighthouse in Sandy Hook.
On December 30, 1883, John was transferred to the Robbins Reef Lighthouse. From the moment they arrived, Kate was unhappy. “I can’t stay here,” she said. “The sight of water wherever I look makes me too lonesome. I won’t unpack!” But somehow, she says, the trunks and the boxes got unpacked, and they began to make a life on the tiny strip of land.
Four years later, John caught a cold while tending the light; it being the 1880’s, his cold turned to pneumonia, and he was brought to the hospital on Staten Island. As he was ferried away, he turned to Kate and said: Mind the light. He died just days later. She followed her last order and took over as light keeper.
John was buried on a hillside on Staten Island. Kate told the story to a reporter, sharing that: “Every morning, when the sun comes up, I stand at a porthole and look across the water toward his grave. Sometimes the hill is green, sometimes it is brown, sometimes it is white with snow. But it always brings a message from him - something I heard him say more often than anything else. Just three words: Mind the light.”
by Author Unknown: as published in Sidney Greenberg, editor: “A Treasury of Comfort” (1954), page 223 and 224
It’s a beautiful short story, but if you read it, you might cry . . .
In New York Harbor between Manhattan and Staten Island, there is a sunken shoal called Robbins Reef. There’s not much there, but there is a small lighthouse, that for many years was tended by an elderly widow - Kate Walker. Born Katherine Gortler in Germany, she came to America with her young son after her first husband died young. Settling in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, she met a young man named John Walker, the assistant keeper of the Sandy Hook Lighthouse. They fell in love, married, and spent the early years of their marriage - including the birth of their daughter - happily tending the lighthouse in Sandy Hook.
On December 30, 1883, John was transferred to the Robbins Reef Lighthouse. From the moment they arrived, Kate was unhappy. “I can’t stay here,” she said. “The sight of water wherever I look makes me too lonesome. I won’t unpack!” But somehow, she says, the trunks and the boxes got unpacked, and they began to make a life on the tiny strip of land.
Four years later, John caught a cold while tending the light; it being the 1880’s, his cold turned to pneumonia, and he was brought to the hospital on Staten Island. As he was ferried away, he turned to Kate and said: Mind the light. He died just days later. She followed her last order and took over as light keeper.
John was buried on a hillside on Staten Island. Kate told the story to a reporter, sharing that: “Every morning, when the sun comes up, I stand at a porthole and look across the water toward his grave. Sometimes the hill is green, sometimes it is brown, sometimes it is white with snow. But it always brings a message from him - something I heard him say more often than anything else. Just three words: Mind the light.”
by Author Unknown: as published in Sidney Greenberg, editor: “A Treasury of Comfort” (1954), page 223 and 224
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