Foundation helps its new friends
Grants support lighthouse restoration and PBS Wisconsin documentary
By Dan Cline, Great Lakes Foundation President
The Great Lakes Foundation’s latest grants are to Friends of Plum and Pilot Islands, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin. These grants support lighthouse-related projects, one to help restore a range light guiding ships into Porte des Mortes (Death’s Door) and the other to help tell the story of Wisconsin’s Lighthouses.
Friends of Plum and Pilot Islands Inc. (See nearby Detroit Harbor M-86)
The Friends of Plum and Pilot Islands was formed in 2007. It partners with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to support the preservation, restoration, maintenance, and contemporary use of the historic resources on Plum and Pilot Islands, and to conserve and protect wildlife resources, while providing opportunities for quality wildlife-dependent recreation.
One of the lighthouses they help preserve is the Plum Island Range Light, which helps guide ships through a deepwater channel running from Lake Michigan into Green Bay through the treacherous Porte des Mortes, or Death’s Door, which lies north of the tip of the Door County Peninsula and south of Washington Island.
The grant helps support removing lead paint and repainting the lower half of the lighthouse tower. This is a major project, and substantial funding has already been received from other sources. If you are heading to the GLCC Rendezvous in Escanaba this summer, and choose to enter Green Bay via Porte Des Mortes, be sure to take a look at this light and know that the Foundation is helping with its restoration.
Friends of PBS Wisconsin, Inc.
Our other friend in this grant cycle is Friends of PBS Wisconsin Inc., which is the charitable arm of PBS Wisconsin. PBS Wisconsin produces many television shows about outdoor life in Wisconsin, and many other topics. Its shows are often broadcast by other public television stations in the Great Lakes region.
Our grant is in support of the production of a television program entitled Wisconsin Lighthouses.
Wisconsin Lighthouses will showcase the unique and most impressive of Wisconsin’s nearly 50 lighthouses. It will show the range and diversity of lighthouses on Wisconsin’s lakes – from the haunted shoals of the Apostle Islands, to Door County’s rugged coast, to Wisconsin’s “inland lake” Lake Winnebago, and all the way down the urban shoreline of Lake Michigan – highlighting Green Bay, Racine, Manitowoc, Two Rivers, Kenosha, and Milwaukee. The show will feature sweeping vistas, inviting landscapes, breathtaking scenery, heartbreaking portrayals, and incredible tales of Great Lakes heroism.
Experts and historians will guide viewers through the inner workings of the lighthouse and reveal the everyday lives of the people who inhabited them – and perhaps even share a few ghost stories.
The show is expected to air in late 2024, and as a sponsor, the Foundation will receive a DVD of the documentary, which we may show at a future GLCC event.
Help the Foundation with its work.
The Foundation supports charitable organizations in the Great Lakes region, including both Canada and the United States. We need your help in two ways: 1) through your generous donations; and 2) by identifying worthy charitable organizations where you boat and directing them to the club website, where they can find information on the Foundation and download a grant application.