Volunteers Rock
They had been slowly making their way through the fog by boat off the western end of Isle Royale. Nearly half an hour of travel and still they saw nothing. “It should be right in front of us,” said the skipper who had been following his GPS, “I can hear the waves hitting the rock.” The Rock of Ages Lighthouse, colloquially known as “The Rock,” lies fifteen miles east of Minnesota’s north shore and two and a half miles west of the islands that are part of Isle Royale National Park. Only accessible by boat, the ten-story lighthouse sits on a 50 by 210-foot long rock that projects up from a more extensive underwater reef, home to three shipwrecks from the late 19th and early 20th century. It was those hazards to shipping that prompted its construction in 1907. Mary Hennessy was on her first trip as a newly minted volunteer for the Rock of Ages Lighthouse Preservation Society (ROALPS). She and three others made up a work team that had spent the previous day waiting out the weather at the