|
Identifying and tracking down the young military men stationed at Point San Luis after the Coast Guard took over operation of the light station in 1939 is an on-going pursuit for staff and volunteers. Frequently this research hits a wall, but occasionally there are breakthroughs. The station’s guest register, often signed by Coast Guardsmen newly assigned to Point San Luis, provides valuable clues. And visitors to the lighthouse sometimes surprise and delight our docents with their tales of living there.
What was life like at the lighthouse during the middle years of the last century? Memories, photos, and old letters shared by Coast Guardsmen, their wives, and their family members provide us with some insight. Here is one of their stories.
Robert Dean Bruhn
Robert Dean “Bob” Bruhn was stationed at Point San Luis on a very short rotation, from March to November 1953. He married Lucille Frances “Frankie” Stonehouse while he was stationed there.
Born in 1930, Bruhn enlisted in the Coast Guard in 1951, perhaps to avoid the Korean conflict. Prior to his transfer to Point San Luis, he was on a Coast Guard boat in Louisiana. Point San Luis was his first, and only, lighthouse assignment.
Bob first met Frankie while on home leave in Nebraska in 1952. His older brother Earl was dating Frankie’s friend Jackie. In early 1953, Earl and Jackie married. Bob got leave to attend the wedding, serving as Earl’s best man; Frankie was maid of honor. While back home for the wedding, Bob and Frankie made plans to marry; it was a whirlwind courtship.
These are excerpts from some letters Bob wrote Frankie between March and May 1953, while he was waiting for her to join him:
—am now on a light station halfway between Frisco and LA, on top of a mountain. There are four married men here with their families and me. They give me extra bucks for chow so have my own cooking to do. For the last couple of days I’ve been on a canned diet. We’ve got one boat to get to shore in but you have to wait until the tide is in to use it. The only other way is to walk around the mountain or by horseback. The station did have a horse here a year ago but he got too old…
—I’m the only engineman here and I believe that’s one too many as I can’t find anything to do. I’ve got one small boat but that doesn’t run unless the tide is in and they go to town to get supplies, which is seldom, and a power plant that only runs when the electricity goes out, and that is the extent of my duties.
—There are four other guys stationed here but they are all married and live in separate houses so that leaves out even a game of cards or something in the evening. We’ve got a foghorn that keeps blowing and sounds like a sick calf. I guess it’s so the ships won’t pile up on this point that sticks out in the ocean. One of the guys’ wife did send over a piece of pie tonight.
—I’m lonesome here by myself. I wouldn’t stay here if my hopes dwindled on you not coming out as I would prefer sea duty to this. At least you don’t have to cook and they have a movie now and then. This is a good place for a married couple, though. The past week I have been working on the outboard so we can use it on the skiff when the tide is too low for the big boat. The guy in charge [John Schulz] took it out for a trial run and also to get the mail. He made it there alright but, on the way back it conked out and he had to row about a mile, so I lost all the points I made.
—I am pretty sure you will like it here as it really is beautiful around the station. There is a pretty nice beach here so you are going to have to learn to swim this summer. The water isn’t too deep until you get out a ways. They have got the station all sowed with grass and lots of flowers and whatnot so it looks pretty nice.
—Remember I was telling you last week I had the flu. It just so happened the whole station came down with it. Funny part was nobody had a cold with it and everybody’s bowels were in an uproar for a couple of days. About the same day all this happened, I started the main pumps for the water to the houses and put some chlorine in the water. I didn’t realize I put so much in until today when I started the same process and read the directions. I had put in about five times too much the other day. It’s a wonder I didn’t kill everybody. Anyway, everybody is contented to think they had the flu and I’m not going to say anything as they would probably hang me.
After they married in May 1953, Bob and Frankie lived in the left side of the Victorian duplex (later demolished). Frankie recalls that it was “real nice inside” with a new electric stove and “Heywood Wakefield furniture with wood arms and cushions.” It was two stories, with a freezer in the dingy basement. “We had to freeze our milk because sometimes you couldn’t get to town for a month.”
Abalone were plentiful and Bob used to dive for these mollusks, which he would prepare for Frankie by pounding and pounding them to get them tender enough to eat—but she wouldn’t touch them, delicacy or not.
There were five men at the station at the time. Richard J. Collins and his wife lived in the house attached to the lighthouse (possibly the last family to live in the Keeper’s dwelling), and the Bruhns and another couple lived in the Victorian duplex. The officer-in-charge, John Schulz, who was best man at their wedding, lived in the “real modern” 1948 duplex, along with another Guardsman named Art Dyer.
Frankie recalls that to get to Avila, they could “walk through the mountain and get thousands of ticks or, when the tide was in, we could take the boat.” But taking the boat was very expensive, and tricky. Once a big wave struck while Bob was trying to dock it and the boat got damaged, “so you pretty much walked the trail.”
On Sundays, Frankie walked the trail to attend mass at the Catholic Church in Avila. The church, St. Peter’s chapel, had just recently been built. It seemed to her no bigger than a two- or three-car garage.
In November 1953, Bob was discharged and the couple moved back to Nebraska.
Bob and Frankie visited the lighthouse in 1964, with their two sons, Bob Jr. and Shane, during a family trip to California. Bob Jr. still remembers the harrowing Jeep ride up the one-lane, unpaved lighthouse road with its steep drop-off down to the bay—not much different from today, except that now the road is black-topped.
Robert Dean Bruhn passed away in July 2010 at the age of 79. Frankie still lives in Nebraska.
This story appeared in the
Jul/Aug 2024 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
All contents copyright © 1995-2024 by Lighthouse Digest®, Inc. No story, photograph, or any other item on this website may be reprinted or reproduced without the express permission of Lighthouse Digest. For contact information, click here.
| 