REAL PEOPLE/TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
Life Just Above Sea Level
Richard Neal snagged a real estate bargain and turned it into a calling
Neal, below right, and Frying Pan Tower by day and by night
AS A BOY, I’d see these ads in the back of magazines saying you could buy a government surplus jeep for a tiny fraction of its original price. That fascinated me. Well, in 2010, I noticed a decommissioned Coast Guard light station 32 miles off the coast of North Carolina being auctioned off. I put in a bid and won the facility, called Frying Pan Tower, for $85,000. My wife and I keep a home onshore, but I come out to the lighthouse often, either by boat or by helicopter. People say, “You know this isn’t normal, right?” I say, “It is just my particular version of normal.”
I bought the place a month after I turned 50. I was a computer salesman, but I’d done it all by then: banking, insurance. I’d been a chemist, mechanic, plumber, electrician. There was something different about having my own 135-foot tower. Growing up in Oklahoma, everything had been flat, so Mom built me a treehouse to stare at the stars. When I finally got out to the Frying Pan, I realized I had bought a grownup version of my childhood fort. The main level is a furnished 5,000-square-foot living space with a fully equipped kitchen and eight bedrooms. We get power from solar panels, though there are also backup generators.
Neal during diving excursions with volunteers
It’s certainly never boring out here. In 2014, I rode out Hurricane Arthur with three of our four children here. At times, I’ve stayed for six months straight. In 2018, I created a foundation and divested all ownership in the property. Now we operate as a nonprofit where ecotourists come out to enjoy the scenery and isolation, and skilled volunteers contribute labor to the ongoing process of restoring the lighthouse. The goal is to protect mariners and sea life and preserve the tower for the next generation. We weld and paint and scrape, but it’s not all work. Sometimes we’ll scuba dive with tiger sharks, or tee off into the water with “golf balls” made of fish food. We can shoot off fireworks that no American city would allow, since we’re beyond U.S. jurisdiction.
When you work a regular job, you think about the hours and the days. But out on the tower, you think in seasons—not just seasons of the year but of your life. Gazing up at the Milky Way or down at the bioluminescent shrimp, it gives you perspective on everything. If there’s something you haven’t done in life, why wait? You’re not going to do it afterward. There is no retirement to life. —As told to David Hochman
Richard Neal, 64, a former salesman and appliance installer, is the executive director of the Frying Pan Tower Foundation. He splits his time between Wilmington, North Carolina, and a lighthouse offshore.