Beavertail Keeper Dominic Turillo

Linda Levesque grew up at Beavertail, one of eleven children. Her father, Domenic Turillo, was keeper there in the 1950s and 1960s
One thing my mother didn't like very much was the inspections the Coast Guard had, white glove, you know. My father would go bananas, he would be waxing and everything, and 'don't put your hands over there!' And we had to be sitting like little angels. You could eat off the floors, even in the engine room.

Even though there were keepers there before us, I still consider that lighthouse ours because we were there for the longest time, and I just have a special feeling for it. Now I'm glad they're maintaining it becaue after the keepers were taken off you'd go down, the place looked so run down and it wasn't being whitewashed, and I'm saying, 'Why isn't somebody doing something?' And when I heard they were thinking of selling the government land near the lighouse I wrote and I said, 'You know, you don't get rid of this, I mean they're crazy!' So I'm gld it worked out.

Dominic Turillo below the fog horn at Beavertail, ca 1950.