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2004 Recipient of the Holland Award
A true pioneer in the preservation of America's lighthouse heritage, Wayne Wheeler has made unparalleled contributions to efforts to save lighthouses and lighthouse history nationwide. Any one of his initiatives, from the founding of the United States Lighthouse Society and the publication of a high-quality quarterly journal to his organization of worldwide lighthouse tours and his leadership in the restoration of a lightship, can be cited as a major contribution to the preservation movement; together, his achievements underscore his national leadership within that movement.
Wayne launched his lighthouse career while serving in the United States Coast Guard. He was a Coast Guard officer from 1963 though 1975, reaching the rank of lieutenant before becoming the civilian assistant chief of the Coast Guard's aids to navigation office in San Francisco. In 1984, while still serving in that office, he launched the United States Lighthouse Society from his dining room table. The Society consumed his off-duty time to the point that he felt compelled to leave the Coast Guard in 1988 to devote his entire work week to the growing and increasingly influential society.
For lighthouses, his timing could not have been better. The 1980s saw the real birth of a lighthouse preservation movement, spurred by increasing Coast Guard automation of the lights and the emergence of national support for historic preservation in general. Wayne's society provided a core for that movement, through its national membership base and its publications, which included newsletters and the quarterly "Keeper's Log" that continues today as a full-color journal of high quality and high standards. Wayne also assembled his first lighthouse slide show in 1977 and spent years after that doing fund-raising presentations that aided lighthouse causes nationwide. He fought for the foghorns of San Francisco Bay, encouraged and educated enthusiasts who wanted to preserve their local lighthouses, and led a national celebration of the bicentennial of the U.S. Lighthouse Service in 1989 at Newport, Rhode Island. In 2001, his 17 years of work and fundraising culminated in a dedication ceremony for a newly-restored lightship in Oakland, California.
Wayne headed a national society that grew to more than 10,000 members in chapters from the State of Washington to the Chesapeake Bay, and he has been active in both the newly-formed World Lighthouse Society's optics task force and in the National Lighthouse Museum, where he served as a founding trustee and its first treasurer. His affiliations and accomplishments are many, but it is his assistance to fledgling preservation groups and his unflagging support of established lighthouse preservation efforts that earn him lasting gratitude and appreciation from the lighthouse community. The American Lighthouse Coordinating Committee is proud to present him the first national H. Ross Holland Award.
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