Lighthouse shines a little brighter this holiday

When fortune smiles down, the holiday season brings out the best in people.

Such is the case of a few dedicated volunteers, imbued with the holiday spirit, who saved the annual tradition of the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse lighting ceremony with quick thinking and fast action.

It all started when an underwater cable that supplied electricity to the lighthouse since the 1940s, powering not only the holiday lights but also video equipment, interior lighting and other systems necessary for tours, malfunctioned in September.

The broken cable threatened a long-standing tradition in Columbia and Greene counties of switching on the historic landmark’s holiday lights the first Saturday of December, which coincides with Winter Walk in Hudson, an annual event attended by thousands of people each year.

Volunteers of the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society worked quickly to come up with a solution. A solar array was found to be the only viable option to provide year-round energy requirements. Volunteers sought advice from David Borton, a retired Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute associate professor of electrical engineering and designer of the first and only U.S. Coast Guard-approved 100% solar-powered boat, the Solaris, and Mike Stengle, an electrical engineer who is co-founder of one of the first solar PV system installers in the state, before designing a solar array and purchasing solar panels and batteries for the lighthouse.

By Nov. 17, component parts had arrived. A panel mounting system was designed and fabricated by the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society volunteers.

So, five days later, armed with a little modern ingenuity and a can-do attitude, six volunteers, including two electricians who installed a generator in the lighthouse so the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society could host its October tours, and electrical engineer Peter Rowland, set out on the Hudson River from the Athens Boat Launch to the lighthouse to install the equipment.

On Nov. 23, the holiday lights were turned on for the first time.

Former Greene County Legislature Chairman Frank Stabile often took time at meetings to exalt the importance of volunteers. He once called the volunteers the backbone of Greene County. He was also fond of citing the contributions of Emily Brunner, who grew up on the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse and will forever be the mistress of this landmark. She is, no doubt, smiling down on the volunteers this holiday season.