Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

Harry Thomas “Tom” Serres

Brent Halsey and Jimmy Rogers, owners of the Stingray Point Marina, built a replica of the lighthouse at the marina in Deltaville, Virginia, 1.6 miles west of the original site. They completed the replica in 2003. Harry Thomas “Tom” Serres is a more modern-day screwpile lightkeeper. Born in Houston, Texas, he grew up in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and Brooklyn, New York. He was 17 when he quit high school, fibbed about his age, and joined the U.S. Coast Guard. One of his duty stations was aboard the Holland Island Bar Light Station off Maryland’s eastern shore near Crisfield. Serres, one of two assistant keepers, served there from 1950 to 1952.

“We worked 30 days on and six days off,” Serres said. “I enjoyed the lighthouse and Crisfield. What I loved most was the weather. The weather often changed overnight, and when the weather was bad we couldn’t leave Crisfield to get back to the light. Holland Island is gone, as is the lighthouse, which was replaced by a beacon on the very same screwpiles that were placed on the island’s sand bar in the mid-1880s.” While he was in the Coast Guard, Serres wrote a few stories for the now defunct U.S. Coast Guard magazine. A chief journalist, Alex Haley (the same Alex Haley of Roots fame), noticed Serres’s work. He sought out Serres and offered to send him to the U.S. Navy’s journalism class at a military training school at Great Lakes, Illinois. Serres

jumped at the opportunity and later became an illustrator and proofreader at the U.S. Coast Guard Institute in Groton, Connecticut. After his career in the Coast Guard, Serres joined the U.S. Air Force and rose to master sergeant and a public affairs officer for the Thunderbirds flying team. He retired to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he currently lives.

Thanks to Serres’s vivid recollections and writing talent, we have yet another perspective on life aboard a screwpile. 11

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