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You might not think that a Bruce Springsteen concert could be responsible for changing the course of ones life, but that is really how it happened.
My daughter, Barbara, begged to see him perform at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, and I decided it might be fun. It was an incredible show and the next week, we flew off to Los Angeles to see him at the Memorial Coliseum as his tour was ending.
We were there for 3 days and spent all of the time driving around LA. Having lived very near the Gulf of Mexico all my life I was excited to see "another coast". We stopped at our first lighthouse, Point Vicente, and that was it. I fell in love. I had seen Point Bolivar in Galveston a hundred times as a kid, but this was different. I stood there looking out at the Pacific, over the cliffs, at the same ocean that world travelers had looked at for thousands of years and I was struck by the idea of it all. The beauty and the danger.
I began to collect lighthouse pictures (Barbara was taking photography in school) and "stuff", anything I could find. We went back to California the next year for 9 days and we went from lighthouse to lighthouse. That began my obsession. To this day it bothers me that I missed seeing so many lighthouses just because I didn't know where they were, or even how to find out where they were.
Eventually lighthouses started to enjoy greater popularity and manufacturers started making hundreds of items, and I wanted to own them all. I had decided that if I couldn't own everything, I could at least offer them to other collectors.
That is how I came up with the idea of starting my catalog. I spent the next couple of years checking out who sold what and how to find them. Finally at the beginning of 1996, we had our first catalog ready to be printed. Barbara and I had done everything from taking the pictures to scanning and laying out the catalog. Soon after the catalog came out, she convinced me that we should put our products on the internet and here we are.
I still have a "real" job during the day (to support my habit ), Barbara works part time and stays home the other part to take care of the phones and orders. So when you call, chances are you will talk to her.
I hope you enjoy my site, I have put a lot of myself into it and have worked hard to bring you a wide variety of really nice lighthouses products.
Thanks,
Sherry and Barbara Graves
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