Ladies of the Lights: Michigan Women in the U.S. Lighthouse Service

12. An Interview with Frances (Wuori Johnson) Marshall

g CHAPTER TWELVE g An Interview with Frances (Wuori Johnson) Marshall What follows is an excerpted version of an oral history interview conducted in 2007 with Michigan’s last female lighthouse keeper Frances Marshall. She served at the White River light on Lake Michigan. The interviewer is the author. The full interview is available in audio and print versions in the archives of the Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association. pm: We’re talking with Frances Marshall about her experiences as a female lighthouse keeper. Can you tell me about your life before you came to White River? fm: I was born in Noble, Georgia, on November 5, 1921. When I was quite small, we moved to Michigan and I grew up in Pontiac. I graduated from Pontiac High School. I never did like Pontiac. My dad had a grocery store there which I worked at fourteen hours a day. So I decided to get a job in industry where I could have some vacation time. When I got a week’s vacation, I decided to spend it on Lake Michigan. I wrote to chambers of commerce all up and down this part of Lake Michigan to ‹nd out what they had. Of course, I got all kinds of mail, and I chose Sylvan Beach Guest House right down the beach from the [White River] lighthouse. I didn’t even see the lighthouse then, but Sylvan Beach seemed like a pretty reasonable place to stay so I decided to stay a week there. I was down on the beach soaking up some sun and this dog came along. Of course, I love dogs, I love any animal. I petted him and he liked that, so he stayed around and I petted him some more. And we made good 74 friends. When I left, he followed me and I kept telling him he had to go home. He ‹nally wandered off to the lighthouse, but I didn’t know where he was going… The following year, I got a week’s vacation again, and so I went back to the Sylvan Beach hotel. I met Timmy again, the dog. So I decided I’d follow him home. I said, “Let’s go home, Timmy,” and he took off but he always looked back to see if I was coming. He led me to the lighthouse. Then I met Leo [Wuori]. pm: He was the keeper at that time? fm: Yes. They had just completed redoing the whole lighthouse inside. pm: What year would this have been? fm: [Around 1944] because they had closed up the Coast Guard station across the channel, and they had a furnace out of there that they put in the lighthouse. It had never had a furnace before. Just had a space heater. Then they put a refrigerator and a nice big sink and countertop in, really ‹xed it up. Sealed up the hole where the old stove used to sit and plastered that over and painted it. Oh, they painted the whole upstairs and downstairs. It was really a quite comfortable house when I moved into it, because it had a furnace and it always had running water, but it had a water heater and was really quite up to date. Well, anyway, Leo and I met through Timmy. [Laugh.] So I spent the rest of the week visiting back and forth at the lighthouse. Then we wrote back and forth when I got home. And he came down to Pontiac to see me. Then I went up to Champion, Michigan, to see his folks. We decided to get married in August. pm: That same year? fm: August of [1944]. pm: That same summer? fm: Yeah. Then he decided the next spring that his time was up in the Coast Guard, [that he wanted to] muster out. I had told him when we discussed marriage, “Just keep it in the back of your mind: I will never, never live in the Upper Peninsula.” So then when he decided to muster out, he said, “And then we can go to the Upper Peninsula.” And I said, “Not me!” So he went one way and I went the other. [Laugh.] An Interview with Frances (Wuori Johnson) Marshall 75 pm: Then you came back as keeper the following year in 1949 and resigned in 1954. Does that sound about right? fm: I went back to Pontiac and that...