Memories of bygone era
Wozny fondly recalls great times he spent at lighthouse off Navy Pier
Iknow a guy who slept in the Chicago Harbor Lighthouse and used to fish from its deck.
long to do both. It hits me every time I pass it, whether from boat or looking east from shore. I want to be one with the red-and-white beauty, the lighthouse east of Navy Pier on the south end of the north breakwall.
I was fishing with RonWozny last fall when he mentioned that he not only had fished from there but had slept there some nights.
‘‘These guys were there for two weeks at a time,’’ he said. ‘‘There was no Internet, no cellphones. All they had was radios for emergencies. They loved company.’’
The Coast Guard workers— one guy switched out each week — had a substantial allotment for food, but they couldn’t use it for beer or cigarettes. So they were loaded with steaks and lobster but not beer or cigarettes.
Wozny would grab a case of Old Style on sale and some smokes, then take them to the lighthouse.
‘‘They enjoyed the company,’’ he said. ‘‘For them, it was, ‘I don’t have to talk to Joe all day long.’ ’’
Wozny started hanging at the lighthouse around 1969 or 1970. He would take the boat out from Rocky’s, the fabled fish house by Navy Pier, to the breakwall to fish for perch. He and Tribune John, a pressman, put in a 12-foot boat for a while, but they had to stop when a police boat said they needed a registration number and the safety stuff.
‘‘If you brought beer, [the lighthouse workers] didn’t care what you did,’’ Wozny said. ‘‘We could climb up to the lights. We would dive off it. It was playtime.’’
Under alleged fears for safety (like so much of urban wilds), people aren’t even allowed to walk on the breakwalls anymore.
If it was raining, Wozny sometimes would go inside and fish out of the freight door.
‘‘I do remember them getting a check one time, and I was trying to get lines out real quick,’’ he said.
The guys had a pool table, and special fishermen sometimes came in to shoot games.
‘‘The girls loved that you could go to the lighthouse,’’ Wozny said. ‘‘And the guys [working there] liked it because they got to see girls. It was one of the great places to watch the fireworks.’’
After the Coast Guard stopped using the lighthouse, it eventually was rented to Stirling Bemis in April 1980, according to a UPI story.
‘‘I got to go once or twice more, but I didn’t really get along with him,’’ Wozny said. ‘‘He was a New York guy.’’
Bemis was actually an East Coast guy, according to the UPI.
The original lighthouse marked the mouth of the Chicago River under a congressional appropriation in 1831, according to
lighthousefriends.com. The website also noted that the lighthouse was moved east as development came and that the light at the current location and structure first was displayed on Aug. 1, 1918.
On Feb. 24, 2009, the transfer began to the City of Chicago.
Wozny thinks the city could use the lighthouse as somewhere people could experience something new.
‘‘It was one of my most absolute favorite times of life,’’ he said.