Elinor DeWire is an author, educator, and a charter member of the U.S. Lighthouse Society. She has been researching, photographing, lecturing, and writing about lighthouses since 1973. Elinor has published twenty-two books and numerous articles about lighthouses and related maritime topics. She has been a regular contributor to the U.S. Lighthouse Society’s Keeper's Log since it began publication in 1984, writes a lighthouse blog, and also contributes to several lighthouse newsletters.
In the early 1990s she developed a lighthouse unit for her elementary classroom and eventually turned it into a consumable book called The Lighthouse Activity Book. Some of the pages, stories, and activities from the book appear under the “Education” link on this website. Elinor is also the creator of "Lighthouse Fun4Kids," a set of interactive pages for children that are mailed with each quarterly issue of The Keepers Log.
Elinor has received numerous awards for her work, including the Coast Guard Book Award, the Ben Franklin Book Award, and the National League of American Pen Women Short Fiction Award. In 2015 the Coast Guard presented her with its Meritorious Public Service Award for her many years of work illuminating Coast Guard history. In 2021, she was chosen as the sponsor of the new fast endurance cutter USCGC FREDERICK HATCH and traveled to Guam to commission the ship.
Elinor has served on the boards of directors for several lighthouse groups, including the Keepers of Point Robinson Lighthouse and the New Dungeness Light Station Association. She has consulted on museum exhibits about lighthouses and appeared in television programs about her favorite subject. Elinor is a popular public speaker who also visits schools and youth groups to help kids complete studies of lighthouses and build lighthouse models. She retired from teaching at Olympic College, Washington in 2015. When not working on lighthouse-related projects, she writes novels from her home office in Connecticut. She holds an M.A. in Education from the University of Connecticut.