Meet Lighthouse Person Elinor DeWire

Elinor DeWire at Vrysaki Lighthouse, Greece

Elinor DeWire, a native of Maryland, has been teaching about lighthouses for over forty years. She has visited, researched, and photographed more than 900 lighthouses all over the world. She has also written hundreds of articles and over twenty books, prompting former Coast Guard historian Dr. Robert Scheina to call her “America’s most prolific lighthouse author and a driving force behind the recent upsurge in interest in preserving lighthouses and the history and nostalgia surrounding them.”

Elinor DeWire at Point Sur Lighthouse

During the 1980’s and 1990’s, Elinor was the supervisor of youth education at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut, where she developed a menu of intergenerational family activities and helped establish the Children’s Museum inside the larger museum. Among the programs she developed for schools was a unit on lighthouses that brought in living history programs and guest speakers, targeting skills for the Connecticut Mastery Test. The program later became a popular book called Lighthouse Activities for Kids.

Elinor at Harlingen Light, Holland

From 1998 through 2007, DeWire wrote a kids’ column for Lighthouse Digest magazine, hosted by “Lighthouse Kitty” and called “Kids on the Beam.” A spin-off of the popular column was the “Kids on the Beam” Lighthouse Education Conference held in New Bedford, Massachusetts in September 2002. The conference was aimed at helping lighthouse groups and museums around the nation develop family-oriented events and activities and grow partnerships with school and youth groups.

She maintains an extensive archive on lighthouses and regularly writes articles on lighthouses for magazines. She is a regular contributor to The Keepers Log, journal of the U.S. Lighthouse Society. The society’s website contains “Elinor DeWire’s Youth Corner,” an interactive education page for kids and families. Her passion for teaching, lighthouses and children continues to motivate her visits to schools for programs and workshops on lighthouses.

Elinor at Cape Leewin LIghthouse, Australia

In addition to teaching, Elinor has helped charter several nonprofit groups devoted to lighthouse preservation and is the Education Chair of the American Lighthouse Council and a member of the Board of Directors for the U.S. Lighthouse Society. A professor at Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington, Elinor is a sought-after speaker.

Elinor writes in her home office overlooking the beautiful Olympic Mountains, her walls and shelves decorated with lighthouse memorabilia collected over years of faithful, fervent research.

“I surround myself with my fascinations,” says DeWire. “Everyone needs a passion in life; mine is lighthouses.”

DeWire’s husband, Jonathan, a retired navy officer, and her two children and two grandchildren have fond memories of the family’s many travels to lighthouses. Her daughter, Jessica DeWire, volunteers for the Keepers of Point Robinson and for the Vashon Heritage Museum. Her husband, Jonathan, plays the “Lighthouse Santa” every December at Point Robinson Lighthouse.