Before the sun is up, a woman is scrambling around her house, searching for a clean dress to wear. It has not rained the last few days, so she has had to cut her shower to only three minutes and hasn’t been able to do the laundry that has started to pile up. The woman finds the proper outfit — a blue, floor-length dress and a white bonnet that she ties under her chin. She peeks out of her bedroom window, the first burst of sunlight now streaking across the black water. By 8 a.m., she will have recorded the temperature for the National Weather Service, sounded the cistern to determine the amount of water available, walked the grounds to ensure all is normal, established the day’s agenda, and posted the flags. Sally Snowman is the 70th keeper of Boston Light, a 233-year-old lighthouse and the nation’s oldest, on Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor. The original Boston Light, built in 1716, was the first lighthouse in the colonies. British forces blew it up in 1776 as they withdrew from Boston. In 1783, the Massachusetts Legislature paid for the lighthouse to be reconstructed to the same 75-foot height as the original. …show more content…
As members of the auxiliary, the civilian reserve component of the Coast Guard, they would spend four to eight days on the island about five times a year when active-duty personnel were sick or on vacation. Snowman and Thomson, who both “loved being on the island,” spent five years researching Boston Light and Little Brewster Island. They self-published a book in 1999, Boston Light: A Historical Perspective. Snowman says it was more a work of passion than an attempt to become a best-selling author. Still, the book can now be found in nearly every Boston-area library, and Snowman hopes to eventually follow it up with a sequel that would go into greater depth about the full history of Boston Light and Little Brewster