Woodworking is Warren Walls’ passion

Give Warren Walls a piece of wood and watch the magic happen.

Growing up on Lewes Beach, Warren was introduced to carpentry and woodworking at a young age. It would become his passion that continues today at his workshop on Robinsonville Road.

He built his large house using oak and walnut wood from the forest on his property. He still is using that wood in his shop.

“I love to work with wood, and it comes from working in my grandfather’s shadow starting at 7 years old. I still have a lot of his tools that I use today,” he said.

But that’s only part of this story.

Walls is one of the few surviving lighthouse keepers in the Cape Region.

In the Coast Guard

Walls, 85, joined the U.S. Coast Guard after graduating from Lewes High School in 1957. He was assigned to the Lewes station where his job was to take a boat out to provide weekly food rations to lighthouse keepers.

One year later, he was transferred to the lighthouse service and was assigned to the Fourteen Foot Bank Lighthouse in Delaware Bay, 11 miles off the coast of Bowers Beach. It was not an easy job, as keepers worked 21 days on with seven days off. He was on station from 1961 to May 1962.

“This was all new to me,” he said.

His grandfather, John Walls, served in the Coast Guard Life-Saving Service, with his last station at Indian River.

The lighthouse, built in 1885-86, was automated in 1972, and is in the National Register of Historic Places.

“There was no place to tie up a boat, so I had to jump off,” he said.

He served 19 years in the Coast Guard. The last five years, he was assigned to a crew that started a lighthouse maintenance program. His crew was assigned to a buoy tender in Cape May, N.J. “We worked on abandoned lighthouses, and with no one there, many had really gone to pot,” he said.

The crew removed lead and asbestos; replaced gangplanks, windows and doors; sanded floors; repaired docks and railings; and painted.

He also served five years in the Coast Guard Reserves.

His experience in the Coast Guard and building model ships paid off when he helped volunteers from the Overfalls Foundation restore a Monomoy surfboat.

The Storm of ‘62

Walls was on duty when the Storm of ’62 hit the coast. Even as far up Delaware Bay as the Fourteen Foot Bank Lighthouse was, Walls said it was pummelled constantly with 30- to 40-foot waves. “The waves were pounding on the front door and the basement was flooded. Winds were sustained around 60 mph. When the waves hit, the lighthouse would tremble. It was a terrible time,” he said.

To make matters worse, the lighthouse foghorn was operating 20 hours per day for a week. “You couldn’t talk to anyone when it was sounding, so we learned to time the blasts so we could talk,” he said. “It was hard to sleep the first few days, but we got used to it and woke up when it wasn’t going off.”

At the time, four men served in the Fourteen Foot Bank Lighthouse.

Not slowing down in retirement

After leaving the Coast Guard, he worked as a carpenter for four years, but, he said, work was not plentiful. He then worked at the DuPont Nylon Plant in Seaford for five years.

“I left that job because I didn’t like it at all,” he said.

Looking to the future, he decided his best shot was to form his own carpentry business. Sea Siding was born. He did home improvements for more than 30 years, retiring in 2001. For a while, his young son, Jonathan, had to help him because he hurt his back. The name was changed to Sea Siding & Son.

In retirement, he has spent countless hours making ship models and even two grandfather clocks. He’s also built several lighthouses, including replicas of the Fourteen Foot Bank and Harbor of Refuge lighthouses.

He has built 20-some ship models, including Coast Guard ships and Chesapeake Bay working boats.

Walls said he was fortunate to find a company that had Coast Guard ship plans. He used the plans, scaled down to three-quarter-inch to a foot, to construct his models.

Over the years, Walls has made just about anything you can think of from wood on his property, including furniture. He is now making beautiful wooden pots from oak and walnut.

Walls operated a sawmill along the shore of Gosling Mill Pond for 20 years, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, who operated a sawmill at the same location on the family farm into the 1950s. For a while, he literally used horse power for its operation.

Walls built a cabin from scrap wood, siding, windows and doors near the sawmill.

He and his wife first lived in Highland Acres, where his shop was in the basement. In 2001, they moved to the 180-acre family farm where his grandparents had lived.

“I can remember that my grandparents had no electricity at their home,” he said.

Life on Lewes Beach

Walls grew up on Lewes Beach – and was born in a cottage on the beach – where his grandmother had a trailer park, and rented cottages and rowboats near where the Cape May-Lewes Ferry is now located.

“It came to an end when Pilot Point was built,” he said.

His parents were Clarence and Margaret Walls, and grandparents were John and Hattie Walls.

Family is important to Walls, who cooks dinner every Friday night for his three children, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. It was a tradition started by his wife that he has continued.

His wife of 61 years, Mary, died in 2021.

His children are Cathy Walls, Cindy Plummer and Jonathan Walls.

Over the years, he has been able to find historical artifacts, including a Fort Miles pot-bellied stove, a Lewes Lifesaving Station sign used to jot down the wind and weather conditions each day, and a U.S. Coast Guard Lewes Station sign. Where did he find these treasures? At the city dump.

He also has three pieces of Lighthouse Service china.