MUKILTEO – Art Losvar used to listen to Seattle Indians baseball games on the radio at the Mukilteo lighthouse.
He and his friends would play softball on the lawn, batting with their backs to the Victorian-style building. Losvar enjoyed being with the lighthouse keepers atop the 38-foot-tall tower.
His grandfather, Peter Christiansen, was the lighthouse’s first keeper. Christiansen died in 1925, 10 months after Losvar was born.
“I never knew him, but I’ve seen stuff on paper, and I’ve heard about him through the family,” Losvar said. “He was all right. I have pictures of him and my grandma walking on their way to church.”
The keeper’s job was to maintain the property and make sure the lighthouse functioned properly. The lighthouse, now automated, no longer requires a keeper.
Dozens of people who either served as keepers or are related to the Mukilteo lighthouse’s caretakers gathered Saturday morning for a reunion at Mukilteo Lighthouse Park.
After eating breakfast at the nearby Rosehill Community Center, the group of nearly 80 people spent the morning touring and reminiscing at the 100-year-old site. The lighthouse and two houses used by keepers and their families are on the property.
Robert Reed of Bellingham was the lighthouse keeper from 1961 to 1964. He lived at the lighthouse with his wife, June, and their four children.
Their daughter, Shelly Butenschoen of Bellingham, was in third grade when they lived there. She and other children would float on inner tubes beneath the ferry dock and bob on the waves from incoming boats. She made good money by helping fishermen unload their boats.
“We had the run of the mill here,” Butenschoen said.
Phyllis Sherar Anderson of Everett lived a block away from the lighthouse during her childhood. Her older sister lived there after marrying the son of Harry Dusenberry, who was a lighthouse keeper from 1926 to 1932.
Anderson and her sister passed the time by playing on the beach.
“This was like a second home,” Anderson said.
Losvar was raised next door to the lighthouse, where his father and grandfather built and repaired boats.
Many things about the city have changed. The lighthouse has not, he said.
“The property hasn’t changed,” he said.
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