Oak Harbor’s Dick Malone has a wish for the thousands of people who visit central Whidbey’s Admiralty Head Lighthouse every year.

“I hope they can understand what it was like to live in this lighthouse a century ago,” he said.

For years, Malone has volunteered as a lighthouse host and tour guide, bringing that story to life for visitors of all ages.

“I enjoy it all, especially the visitors,” says the former Illinois school teacher. “I’ve met ex-students of mine and even a graduate of my wife’s tiny ‘corn country’ high school.”

When Malone’s not welcoming visitors, he is often working on another part of the story in his workshop at home. He builds authentic replicas of lighthouse tools and furnishings. Piece by piece, he tangibly recreates a solitary lifestyle that still reaches out and intrigues people generations after the light was extinguished in 1922.

His latest project is an exquisite, oak-topped workbench for the tower room.

It is one of several furnishings he has crafted to reveal more of the daily routines of those who lived at this isolated post. Malone’s eye spotted the bench one day while examining original lighthouse blueprints.

“That bench was the only non-structural, non-attached piece of furniture on those blueprints,” explained Gloria Wahlin, lighthouse coordinator. “We obtained a historical structural report, which I loaned to Dick. Among the copied documents he found the description.”

That was the easy part, according to Malone.

“The hard part was deciphering the specifications and drawing up plans,” he said. “The specs from 1901 used some woodworking terms I wasn’t familiar with.”

Malone estimates he invested 108 hours over a six-month period building the oak top, spruce drawers, fir facing and cedar frame. The result was a bench of such beauty that Wahlin agonized about putting it on display for fear it might get damaged by someone’s carelessness. But he put her at ease.

“If it does, we’ll just repair it,” Malone said. “What makes me proudest is that I think I faithfully reproduced what was really here more than 100 years ago.”

Last year Malone built a replica for the lighthouse of a U.S. Lighthouse Service traveling library. He reconstructed the cabinet-style box from photographs and plans he found on the Internet and borrowed from other lighthouses. Such boxes held an assortment of books and magazines to help keepers and their families pass the lonely hours. The traveling libraries rotated from lighthouse to lighthouse throughout the United States.

Malone faithfully built his replica of eastern white pine, T-shaped hinges and brass strapping, and finished it with shellac.

He also made a lighthouse keeper’s night watchman’s rattle, a wooden instrument keepers and night watchmen used when they needed to make a loud noise to get attention. The woodworking projects were funded by a grant from the Coupeville Festival Association, Keepers of Admiralty Head Lighthouse and sales of the “Washington Lighthouses” vehicle license plate.

Also on display are two new exhibits made of brass by another lighthouse volunteer, Lee Hart of Coupeville. These include a lighthouse keeper’s service basket and a light keeper’s rouge box.

Lighthouse coordinator Wahlin says much is happening these days with the interpretive displays at the lighthouse, which was decommissioned in 1922 and sat empty and neglected for years.

“We have cleared out the lighthouse dining room and made it into our new lighthouse history room,” she said.

Another volunteer, Barbara Lyter, will start work soon on museum-quality displays.

The lamp at Admiralty Head first was lit in 1861 in a wood-frame structure nearby on the grounds of what later became Fort Casey. The current Spanish-style, stucco lighthouse was built in 1903. It is owned by Washington State Parks and kept open to the public by the volunteer programs of Washington State University Extension under a cooperative agreement that, in return, gives them office space on the upper floor.

It is open to the public from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily during the summer months. In September the schedule cuts back to Fridays through Mondays, and in October to Fridays through Sundays.