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Keeper Of The Flame

Tribune photo by JULIE BUSCH

Egmont Key assistant park manager Tom Watson points out the features of the island from the Egmont Key lighthouse built in 1858

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By STEVE KORNACKI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 5, 2007

EGMONT KEY - EGMONT KEY - The rat race has no course here. You mention this to Tom Watson from a perch atop the lighthouse and he chuckles before adding: "And I don't miss it a bit."

Watson is the assistant park manager at Egmont Key, the keeper and lone resident of this splendid little isle at the entrance to the channel leading into Tampa Bay. It is miles away from the deadline pressures of his former jobs.

He came to Florida from New York to work in television station management in 1971, and enjoyed it. But something started to change when he began volunteering on this island that has been his home since 2001. "It was great therapy for me when I was in TV," says Watson.

He is doing something many people dream about but few have the courage to try. Yet, you mention doing a story about him and he waves it off. "Why not write about this island instead?" he says. "It has so much to offer."

Such as sandy beaches, boundless wildlife, views of Anna Maria Island and Fort DeSoto Park and the constant flow of pleasure boats and the occasional freighter passing by. Or the lighthouse and remnants of history, such as the crumbling gun battery turrets from what was a military post for Confederates and U.S. troops during the Spanish-American War and World War I. And then there are the 1,800 gopher tortoises and 800 box turtles, as ubiquitous as lizards in the suburbs.

Watson steps out of the golf cart he uses to patrol the 1.5 mile-long island and walks up to a gopher tortoise. "Hey, buddy, how you doing?" he greets it. Later, he spies a lone royal tern on the beach. "Hey, you're all alone!" he shouts. "All your buddies went south."

Some of the animals have names, he confides. The tortoise that lost a flipper in a dog fight is Peg. As in peg leg.

"I don't need any pets. I have all the wildlife I need. And I love helping them all out."

He removes fishing line and plastic six-pack holders from birds, and three or four times a day he flips overturned tortoises upright again.

"They fight, and the victor flips the loser on its back," Watson says. "They can't get up."

In some ways it is his Walden Pond, but in other ways it isn't. Henry David Thoreau never had what amounts to a regatta of pleasure boaters cram his shoreline three-deep on weekends and holidays.

"You just make sure everything is going as it should," he says, "and most people are pretty good about obeying the rules. There are no fires, dogs or alcohol allowed. And you can't tie your boats to the palm trees."

Many of the palms on the sandy beach lining the west side of the isle have been weakened by salt water and erosion.

He welcomes questions from the day trippers. The top three are:

"Who's killing the trees?"

"Is this Egmont Key?"

"Can we camp?"

The answer to that last one is no.

Robert E. Lee Was There

There is something about being on Egmont Key on a weekday that makes you feel like you are alone on a deserted island. Watson says we have a famous general to thank for the peace.

"Robert E. Lee surveyed this island in the 1830s, and his recommendation was to keep it in government possession and never allow it into public hands," he says. "Congress then decided to build a lighthouse out here. And I like to say that they built Tampa Bay from the light it gave."

It was a military outpost much of the time, housing a small city of military families in the early 1900s. The network of brick pathways that led to the store, movie theater, hospital and bowling alley now leads past crumbling ruins overgrown with palmettos, sea grapes and vines. The island remained in Hillsborough County when Pinellas County was created in 1912 and was deactivated as a fort in 1923. The U.S. Coast Guard eventually took it over, maintaining the lighthouse and radio guidance equipment. The light eventually was automated, and The Florida Park Service began operations of Egmont Key State Park in 1989 in a co-management agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The lighthouse, built in 1858, has been the constant. Its double brick walls were designed to withstand what its predecessor could not: a hurricane.

Watson loves telling the story of the lighthouse as he climbs its 85 wrought-iron steps, adding, "I'm sure sorry about that last cigarette I had."

At the top he says, "Confederates stood right where we are now and said, 'Wow! Union tugboats!' Then they took the Fresnel lens [part of the lighthouse beacon] and headed for Tampa. Rumor was they buried it there. After the war, it came back."

The lighthouse has had 150 years of keepers, he notes.

"I think about them when I'm here. I think, 'If they were here, what would they say?' At times I feel I'm not alone."

Legend has it that the first lighthouse keeper, Sherrod Edwards, rode out the hurricane of 1848 in his rowboat tied to the lighthouse, Watson shares, adding he can't confirm the tale is 100 percent true.

Lighthouse Figurines And Ball Caps

Watson was a sales manager at WFLA, Channel 8, and WFTS, Channel 28, in Tampa and station manager at WTTA, Channel 38 in St. Petersburg before switching to island management.

"My loves are history and wildlife," says Watson, whose modest white wood-frame, three-bedroom house belies his words: pictures of his five children and 11 grandchildren hang on walls and cover tabletops.

The home, built in 1957, has a living room, a small front room that has become an office, a small kitchen, a pool table, a white picket fence in need of fresh paint and killer views. Its old furniture looks like it came from a flea-market buying spree, but it goes well with his lighthouse figurine collection and baseball caps inscribed with New York Yankees championships and "U.S. Coast Guard Light Station Egmont Key." He has air conditioning, a washer and dryer.

Watson goes grocery shopping on the mainland once a week, carefully planning his list — which can't include ice cream because it would melt on the trip back. When he gets a chance to get away, he loves visiting Walt Disney World with the grandkids. One of his favorite spots there is the Swiss Family Robinson attraction.

"I really like the tree house," he says.

Sometimes family and friends come to visit. And three park rangers ferry in by boat to help out from dawn to dusk.

The only thing he misses about the city, Watson says, is long showers. Fresh water is precious on Egmont.

"There is a term in French that translates to voluntary simplicity," he says. "You go back to the simple life."

Reporter Steve Kornacki can be reached at (813) 731-8170 or skornacki@tampatrib.com.

FUNDRAISER

Discover the Island

WHAT: Egmont Key Alliance's 10th annual fundraiser offering boat shuttle to the island, interpretive walking tours and history demonstrations including Civil War re-enactors and a staged World War II battleship invasion.

WHEN: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Last boat returns from Egmont Key at 5 p.m.

WHERE: Shuttle boats leave Fort DeSoto Park (Egmont Key is accessible only by boat)

HOW MUCH: $15 for round-trip shuttle and tours; children under 12 are free. For information, driving directions and advance ticket purchases, go to www.egmontkey.info. Only 1,200 tickets will be sold each day.

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