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Perhaps because his father worked on a tourist boat or perhaps just because he lived on the Great Lakes where he was born in 1901 in Houghton, Michigan, David S. Simonson probably sensed from a young age that he would spend most of his life around the water.
Simonson joined the well respected United States Lighthouse Service in 1936 and served as a crew man on a buoy tender. However, at the outbreak of World War II, he went off to serve his country and ended up on a transport ship in the South Pacific. At the conclusion of the war, he was able to secure himself the position of lighthouse keeper and went to Devils Island Lighthouse in Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands. After a short stint at Devils Island, he was sent to the Superior Entry Lighthouse, which is also known as the Wisconsin Point Lighthouse, where he served until his retirement in 1965. David S. Simonson died in 1981 and is interred at the Greenwood Cemetery in Superior, Wisconsin.
We wish to thank Mrs. Joseph Miller (Mary E. Simonson) for sharing these photographs of David S. Simonson with us, which now help to preserve a vital slice of lighthouse history for future generations.
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