After 30 Years, She’s Turning In Her Keys to the Montauk Lighthouse

MONTAUK, N.Y. — For Margaret A. Winski, living in the lighthouse here was a childhood dream realized.

From the tower, she saw three decades of autumns characterized by water “boiling” with schools of fish and fishermen shoulder-to-shoulder along the shoreline. She stood in the lantern room of the Montauk Lighthouse as snow swirled around her during Long Island’s powerful winter storms.

“It’s like being in a snow globe,” she said on the couch in her apartment with her 120-pound Newfoundland dog, Kate Weber, at her feet.

She spent the summers welcoming thousands of visitors from around the world to the place she called home.

But now, after 31 years, Winski is moving to Maine.

“When you turn 60,” said Winski, 62, “something snaps in your head.” She said she realized she did not have time to waste, and had wanted to live in Maine for years.

Lighthouse keepers of old were survivalists — hunters, farmers, fishermen living with limited supplies and no modern conveniences. They would tend the light and maintain the fog horn, said Jeff Gales, executive director of the U.S. Lighthouse Society. But the traditional “lighthouse keeper” role no longer exists, he said.

The Montauk Lighthouse, built in 1796, was commissioned by President George Washington as one of the first public works projects in the United States. It is the fourth oldest lighthouse in continuous operation in the country and is a National Historic Landmark and popular tourist destination, said Henry Osmers, 68, assistant director of the lighthouse and its historian. The lighthouse’s light flashes every five seconds and its foghorn sounds two seconds of every 15 seconds, he said.

On April 1, 1987, the U.S. Coast Guard moved out of the Montauk Lighthouse, having automated the light and foghorn and turned it over to the Montauk Historical Society.

That night, Winski moved in as a resident in exchange for her presence at night. She would also handle the money from ticket and gift shop sales.

Winski would watch lightening storms from the front porch, read profusely, and listen to the radio. Five years in, she would get a television.

“I’m a solitary person,” she said. “A lot of people would go out of their minds, I think.”

Winski’s family moved from Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, to Montauk when she was 12 and she imagined living in a lighthouse somewhere, someday. She considered joining the Coast Guard for that reason.

“I went for the interview and they said, ‘Why do you want to join the Coast Guard?’ And I said, ‘I want to live in a lighthouse,'” she recalled. “They said, ‘Forget it, you’ll never live in a lighthouse.'”

When she learned of the lighthouse vacancy, she wrote a proposal that earned her the residency. When she could not be there at night, she had a friend stay over.

With a place to live but no income, Winski got a day job with the Postal Service and worked for 30 years at the local post office, which she calls “the heart of the town.”

At the lighthouse, she has been first on the scene of ship wrecks and the one to inform gate jumpers carrying suitcases that, no, they could not spend the night.

“Every nut ends up at Montauk Point,” Winski said.

Once, about a decade ago, a car drove up behind her. Normally, she would turn after-hours visitors away, but there was “something about these people.”

She invited the group in for a tour and up the 137 steps to the tower. It was actress Nicole Kidman; singer Keith Urban, her husband; and Ingrid Sischy, the Vanity Fair writer and critic. Leslee Dart, whose public relations firm represents Kidman, confirmed the outing.

“I sort of knew who she was, but had no idea who he was,” Winski said. “He’s like, ‘Hi, I’m Keith.’ I’m like, ‘Good. I’m Marge.'”

She searched for him online after he left.

Winski, known as Marge, had become a lighthouse fixture. Osmers said, “Having Marge here was like having a well-fitting glove. It was just comfortable.”

When Joseph Gaviola learned that Winski was moving out, he volunteered to move in. Gaviola, 63, a Montauk businessman and member of the lighthouse board, grew up on Long Island.

“I look at it as an adventure; but, on the other hand, we have a National Historic Landmark, and we want and require somebody to be in attendance there,” Gaviola said.

He plans to renovate the living space, he said, in part to create more closet space for his suits.

“It’s going to be a learning curve for a while,” he said, of living in a public space. He is prepared.

“It can be rough, lonely, isolated, a little scary at times, I’m sure,” Gaviola said. “On the other hand, it’s a utopian place. It’s, you know, historic, and you can’t think of a better view.”

Winski plans to write a book about living in the lighthouse.

She will miss the whistles of Scoters at night and being “surrounded by such beauty on a grand scale.” But she will not miss the drones that have hovered outside her window at every sunrise and sunset for the past five years.