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One of the original uniforms worn by Henrik Olsen from 1933 to 1951, when he served first as assistant keeper then keeper at Michigan’s Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse, has been donated to the museum that was once the home to the lighthouse keepers.
Ray Olsen, in returning to the lighthouse where his father was keeper, recalled his teenage years at the lighthouse helping out his father. Starting his climb at the bottom of the circular stairs to the tower as he looked up he recalled, “Fifty-Five steps . . . . I’d go up those steps at night before I’d go to bed, to wind the clock mechanism.”
In accepting the uniform of Henrik Olsen and some other artifacts the Olsen family donated, Steve Brisson, Mackinac State Historic Parks Curator of Collections, said to the Olsen family, “These donations are a testament to the legacy you’ve created in your family, a family that appreciates its history enough to part with it. Your father’s uniform and the furnishings from your youth will be preserved forever as a part of the eventual reopening of the Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse.”
This story appeared in the May 2003 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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