Episode Details

This is a special edition of Light
Hearted, featuring an extended interview with a former lighthouse keeper. Ernie DeRaps, a native Mainer, spent several years
in the 1950s and ‘60s as a Coast Guard lighthouse keeper at four Maine
lighthouses – Monhegan, Fort Point, Heron Neck, and Browns Head. After
retirement he took up painting at the age of 80.  Ernie is now in his early 90s, and he has
completed portraits of all 65 lighthouses on the Maine coast.

A book by Ernie DeRaps and his wife, Pauline, was published by Foghorn Publishing in 2006. Ernie’s half of the book was called Lighthouse Keeping. If you turn the book over and upside down, the other half of the book, by Pauline Fitzgerald DeRaps, was called Light Housekeeping.

Ernie and Pauline were married for 64 years and had six children. Pauline passed away in 2015 and is, of course, greatly missed, but Ernie is staying busy with his painting, as well as his children, nine grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. Ernie celebrates his 92nd birthday this month.

The book Lighthouse Keeping / Light Housekeeping by Ernie and Pauline DeRaps is available from Foghorn Publishing. You can see some of Ernie’s paintings of Maine lighthouses at pigmentartstudio.com. You’ll see his Lighthouses of the Maine Coast series as well as some nature paintings and seascapes.

Note from producer/host Jeremy D’Entremont: I visited Ernie DeRaps at his home in Richmond, Maine, last February. With me was my friend Bob Trapani, Jr., executive director of the American Lighthouse Foundation. Bob took part in the conversation with Ernie. The reason I waited until now to post this interview is that there was