By ANNELI FOGT
Editor
Climbing up old wooden stairs to pick apples, sneaking into her grandmother’s garden to eat peas and hearing her grandfather yell about his cow that kept turning the outdoor water spigot on are some of Karen Musselman’s fondest memories of the time she spent at the Point Robinson lighthouse, while her grandfather was the keeper in the 1940s and 50s.
“We were sitting at dinner, and I don’t know how he knew, but he did, and he said, ‘That cow has got the water on again!’ And it’s pouring rain and he goes out to turn the water off,” Musselman said on Thursday as she recalled her favorite memories of her grandfather.
Musselman came back to the keeper’s quarters last week for a five-day visit. Two of her daughters and her brother also came along to relive her memories. It was the first time she had been back in the home since her grandfather retired from the lighthouse in 1955.
“I have been wanting to come back for years, and then I got to kicking it around last year and saw that they were renting it out,” Musselman, who now lives in Omak, said. “If I could stay here for the rest of my life I would.”
Mussleman’s own father was in the Coast Guard, and her family moved around a lot because of it. She said that her times at the Point Robinson lighthouse were always “stable.”
“This is home,” Musselman said Thursday as she sat in the house’s living room in front of a large window facing the sound. “We moved around a lot, all over the place, from Tatoosh Island to Mukilteo to Alaska. For some reason, I don’t remember why, I stayed here (in the keeper’s quarters) with (my grandparents) for about a year. I went to first grade here. I tailed (my grandfather) all over this place. He’d start up the generators, and I’d run away because I knew they were going to eat me.”
She said that she spent most of her time as a young child on the beach entertaining herself. She was the only child at the lighthouse and was her grandparents’ only grandchild for six years.
“Grandpa would take me up the hill to catch the school bus, and I would go to school, but I’d have to walk back to the house alone when school was over because it was the end of the route,” Musselman said. “I used to hate that.”
She and her family spent last week at the house having a sort of family reunion. Multiple aunts, uncles and cousins joined them and told stories about their time with Musselman’s grandfather Jens and grandmother Elsie. For Musselman’s daughters, the experience was “once in a lifetime,” and a chance to finally see the place that they had heard so much about.
“It’s awesome. We’ve heard stories forever, and now being able to hear the stories and experience the place, it’s something I’ve been looking forward to,” Musselman’s daughter Tammy Busby said. “She had Grandpa wrapped around her finger.”
Musselman’s other daughter, Teresa Adams, said that seeing the place helps to “put all the pieces” of their family history together.
“It’s been a blast,” Adams said. “We’re going to try and come back next Thanksgiving with even more family. The house is going to be packed.”
Musselman said that the house is no stranger to being packed with people. She said that holidays at the home were always huge, with family coming to eat and celebrate with her grandma Elsie’s cooking. Her grandparents remained on the island after Jens Pedersen retired, and moved to a house in town where the tradition continued.
“Holiday dinners, everybody would come and the whole family was in the basement for family dinners at the big house in Vashon,” Musselman said as she talked to her younger brother.
Her grandfather Jens immigrated to the U.S. from Denmark in 1910 and worked in a small logging operation before becoming a lighthouse keeper. Elsie immigrated from Germany in 1913; the two met in Washington, were eventually married and moved to Vashon.
Musselman said that her grandfather was her hero and that she will always remember her times at the lighthouse.
“It was a chaotic time, and this was always home, going back to the lighthouse,” Musselman said.
