The New Point Loma Lighthouse celebrated its 125th anniversary on March 23 with Patricia Dudley Goulart and Joan Dudley Eayrs, daughters of original lighthouse keeper James Elliot Dudley. The sisters lived in the area for the first 19 and 20 years of their lives as their father was the lighthouse keeper for 24 years. Nowadays, the daughters don’t have so many opportunities to visit their first home, because it is on government property; however, the lighthouse still feels like coming back home to where they belong.
“Feels like I haven’t left, like I’m still living here. We were only teenagers, Patricia was 20 and I was 18, almost 19; that is your whole young life,” Eayrs said.
Their father never included the sisters in any actual work for the lighthouse. The only thing they did, and it wasn’t asked from them, was take the flag down in the evening. “We couldn’t put it up, but we took it down and folded it and we were told how to properly fold a flag,” Goulart remembers.
They took care of the animals. In the yard, they had lot of chickens, and Goulart milked a cow. It was a miniature farm life. The sisters remembered one exciting experience. Goulart was home sick in the sunroom in the keeper’s house. She was laying on the couch and it got too warm, so she and Eayrs moved to the room on the other side of the house – the family room. The front door of the sunroom was a 4-by-8 foot door, and half of it was made of frosted glass, like crystal.
“Moments later after we moved, there was a huge explosion. Normally, the Army was supposed to advise us when they were going to practice so we could open the windows and doors to protect them from the concussion of the guns firing, but we didn’t get a phone call,” Goulart said.
Unfortunately, there was a gun malfunction of some kind, which blew it up and killed five men. The concussion shattered the sunroom door and sent glass onto the couch Goulart was laying on. “The pieces of glass were really sharp, like crystal. We were lucky we moved,” she said.
The sisters are pleased that historians and the Cabrillo National Monument have made the effort to document the history of the lighthouse. When the men who lived here and served there retired, it was an end of an era. “Joan and I are the last living persons from that era,” Goulart said. “Dad and the lighthouse keepers were so dedicated to their service it was like nothing else. It wasn’t like regular military; it was a dedication – heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time,” the sisters said.
