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Some people were destined to make a positive difference during their lifetime. Paul Schumacher is one of those special individuals.
Schumacher, 70, serves as the volunteer leader for Wisconsin’s Friends of Plum and Pilot Islands’ (FOPPI) historic preservation committee. A retired engineer, he devotes seemingly countless hours of his time to writing out scopes of work for the buildings and waterside structures on Plum and Pilot Islands in the Death’s Door region of northern Door County, Wisconsin. With the help of a dedicated team of passionate preservationists, Schumacher does much of the leg work in tracking down contractors, materials, and transportation to put plans into action.
I caught up with Schumacher on August 26, 2021, when he was on his way to Pilot Island with Frank Gercz of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to check the progress of the restoration work being done on the 1858 lighthouse that is on the Lighthouse Digest Doomsday List of Endangered Lighthouses.
Moore Quality Exteriors, LLC from Sheboygan, WI, had a six-man crew on the island fabricating gutters and downspouts to minimize water damage being done to the building’s Cream City bricks. They were also installing a new metal roof over the summer kitchen on the east side of the lighthouse. The work is being funded by FOPPI.
Company president, Chad Moore said, “We really appreciate the opportunity to work on a project like this.” Moore is a craftsman whose skill is evident in the quality results he and his men produce.
Tiny Pilot Island, part of the Green Bay National Wildlife Refuge, is currently a bird sanctuary managed by the USFWS. It is not open to the public for visitation. There is only a small window of time after the cormorants, gulls and pelicans finish nesting and their young have fledged, that the USFWS will allow contractors to access the island. In addition, the lighthouse and neighboring fog signal building have been left to fend for themselves since the last of the keepers left more than 60 years ago.
The fog signal building has collapsed. The lighthouse received a new roof in 2009, but the interior had already suffered major water damage prior to the installation of the asphalt shingles over the main part of the dwelling.
“It’s a shame to see lighthouses neglected,” Schumacher said. “These are a part of our heritage. If we don’t work to save them, they won’t be around for our children to see.”
Schumacher plans to begin putting together a scope of work for the damaged bricks on the exterior of the Pilot Island Lighthouse with the hope that next August, workers will be able to stop the walls of the lighthouse from crumbling further. So, we’ll be keeping an eye out for more preservation work on Plum Island in 2022.
For information on the Friends of Plum and Pilot Islands go to www.plumandpilot.org
This story appeared in the
Nov/Dec 2021 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.
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