By Myra Ross | From BayLines Express, November, 2022
Carol Fithian is a woman of boundless curiosity. She has been a researcher, published author, park ranger for the National Park Service on the Boston Harbor Islands, and the Director of Volunteer Recruitment and Training for the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands. She selected and trained countless volunteers over more than twenty years. They conducted informational tours on eight of the thirty-four islands that span the distance approximately from Revere to Hingham.
For hundreds of years, the islands were used for various purposes including residences, hospitals, and forts (during the Civil War). On Thompson Island, there was a school for homeless, indigent boys in the 1800s.
Even though her first cruise to the islands was almost thirty years ago, Carol can tell you with precision about each of her early trips. She was drawn by the natural beauty, the mystery, and the history. Carol was distressed when she learned that the cemetery on Thompson Island held the remains of boys from the school who had died in boat accidents, one caused by a squall while returning from a trip to Boston that had been earned for good behavior. The graves were unmarked, designated only by a few rocks. Carol was determined to try to find out who the boys were. For more than a year, ca. 1995, she researched, reading articles on microfilm about the accident. She learned the names of the boys who perished and wrote an article that was published in the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands newsletter and was on their website. She says for her, the best day was when the boys’ names, uncovered through her research, went up on the Internet. Although there is not a permanent sign with their names on the island, there is a sign about the boys buried there.
At one point, Carol was contacted by the grandson of one of the boys who had survived the second boating accident. He saw her information on the Thompson Island website. She says, “I just happened to have one article written by his grandfather and was able to send it off to him in Virginia.” It was a thrill for her to be able to connect this man with his family’s past.
In 2000, the history of the island was a graduation project for the sixth grade at a charter school. They cleaned the island up, put up fences, and commemorated the boys, about whom they learned from Carol’s research. Their sign with the boys’ names burned into it has not survived the weather, but Carol has a photograph of it. The graduates each had written a letter to one of the boys and shared it at the ceremony, to which Carol was invited. She says it was a very emotional experience for her. The event and Carol’s research was described in chapter 10 of the “East of Boston — Notes on the Boston Harbor Islands” by Stephanie Schorow, which Carol helped her write.
While engaged in her research project, when one of her children was still living at home, Carol was becoming more and more involved with activities on the islands. She became a member of the crew on the Gloucester Adventure fishing schooner. She honed her physical skills and strength at an “Outward Bound” program on Thompson Island involving a ropes course, zip line, wall climbing, night runs, camping, and rock climbing at Quincy Quarry. She was even in a storm at sea on a schooner that lost its sails, just like on Gilligan’s Island, but true! At that time also, Carol joined the Board of the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands and learned to give tours.
In 1998, she got a paid position. She became one of the first rangers on the ranger team for the Boston Harbor Islands National Park Area, a position she held for two seasons of thirteen-hour days (including the commute). In 2000, she began her twenty-one-year stint as the Coordinator of Volunteers for the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands, a full-year paid position with better hours. She was able to continue associating with the rangers. Her job was to recruit, train, and manage volunteers, matching their skills to tasks needed on various islands. Her volunteers worked and served in all areas of the park and with several state and federal agencies, including the MA Department of Conservation and Recreation, Thompson Island, and the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary at Boston Light. She says she met many people and developed strong managerial skills. She learned to sail the harbor and took Coast Guard Auxiliary classes in seamanship and navigation. It was the job of her dreams, which she held for more than twenty years.
Under Carol’s direction, the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands received national recognition in 2002. They shared the “National Park Service VIP of the year” award with a group from Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. Carol was awarded a trip to Washington, D.C., where she met with the Secretary of the Interior.
Always legally blind, Carol attended Perkins as a child and then Lexington High School. She learned to read Braille and was also able to read print with magnification. She learned to use a computer at The Carroll Center. Her vision declined during the second summer she was a Ranger. She had two surgical procedures, but her vision never got back to what it had been. Using ZoomText at 3x, she could still work with pictures and texts and could still create PowerPoints and brochures visually.
As her vision deteriorated, Carol got her first guide dog in 2006 as a safety precaution. She knew how to use a cane, but preferred working with that dog. She has another dog now.
Since retiring in 2021, Carol has taken on a new research project about the children on the streets of Paris during the 1600s, which she says probably ties into her interest in the indigent boys on Thompson Island. She is doing extensive computer work, now with speech and Braille. Using Seeing AI on her iPhone, she scans materials in French and is learning to read them on her Humanware notetaker. She loves the fact that she can hear the French simultaneously with feeling how to spell it. On her Zoomax, she downloaded “Learn How to Speak French” from BARD, and is taking a French class. She would like to be able to add a French perspective to her English research. Carol’s boundless curiosity continues! Carol lives in Ipswich. You can contact her at fithiancj@comcast.net.