Tim Hawk
Photography

Buddy Grover counts to himself as he makes his way to the top.

”Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis…”

He says the numbers in Spanish to keep his mind sharp and to remind himself to pause and catch his breath on his 10-minute climb to the top of Absecon Lighthouse at the northern end of Atlantic City.

That’s 228 steps for the 94-year-old lightkeeper who makes the trek at least once a week.

“My salvation,” he says of the climb he has made since he was a spry 82 years old.

From the years before gambling was legalized to the recent surge of non-casino attractions Grover — born George “Buddy” Hill Grover III — has seen it all in Atlantic City. For the last 12 years, he has enjoyed a different view of the Jersey Shore town he calls home— 171 feet high inside the lantern room of the lighthouse.

The volunteer with the round glasses and the gift of talking, who has more spirit than men half his age, Grover greets visitors before they step out onto the watch, the 360-degree walkway which offers up spectacular views of the city.

And he has no plans of stopping.

“He’s just such a unique, wonderful person with an amazing personal history and a way about him that is engaging,” said Jean Muchanic, executive director of the lighthouse.

Grover dresses the part of the old lightkeepers wearing a navy blue wool jacket, black wool pants and a hat with a lighthouse embroidered on the front of it. He always greets people with a smile and a signed card congratulating them on their accomplishment as soon as they reach the top.

“We are the tallest lighthouse in New Jersey, third tallest (masonry) in the United States, and that you just climbed 228 steps, it’s a little more than 17 stories and your reward for all that hard work is right out there,” Grover told two women as they tried to catch their breath from the climb one Friday afternoon in February. “It’s cold and windy, but the walkway goes all the way around.”

Once the visitors return from taking in the views, he is quick to talk about the history of Atlantic City and the lighthouse, especially the first-order Fresnel lens. Inevitably, the conversation turns about him and how he still is able to do what he does at his age.

With a wide smile and a slight laugh, he offers up tidbits about his life and how he wants to live to 105, the age he arbitrarily set to reach based on the song “Young at Heart” by Frank Sinatra.

“I might go further or not as far,” he said.

Most times their all-too-brief encounter ends with visitors posing for a picture with the unofficial face of the 165-year-old beacon.

“You’re just as important as this landmark,” one visitor told Grover before disappearing with his family back down the steps.

Grover’s path through life resembles those of the spiral stairs he climbs every week, winding to different platforms before landing at a location, unsure of what awaits but enjoying the long journey.

“If it had not been for the certain turns that I had relatively little control over, I probably wouldn’t be alive,” he said. “I would have had a desk job and just disappeared.”

Grover was born in Hamilton Square in September of 1927, the same year the Holland Tunnel opened, and graduated high school in 1945. He attended Rutgers University that summer, but was drafted into the Army when he turned 18.

During his physical, he was deemed not qualified for military service after he gave a tongue-in-cheek answer when asked if he had any serious accidents.

“I fell off my bicycle once, broke two teeth and I had a black eye,” he remembers telling the doctor.

But World War II ended that summer and Grover later presumed the Army just didn’t need anyone else. A few months later, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and was sent Parris Island and Camp Lejeune in the Carolinas.

He bulked up from 130 pounds to 150 pounds — the same weight he is today though he said it shifted some — while becoming a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) man. Eventually, he had enough of the training so he tested and passed for a Naval ROTC scholarship which ended his Marine active duty after one year and two days.

He attended the University of North Carolina with the plan of becoming an officer in the Marines. During the summers he kept busy — first, aboard a naval ship traveling to the West Coast and Hawaii, later at a Naval Air Station in Tallahassee, Florida, and the finally in Quantico, Virginia.

Grover managed to stay in school for four years but never graduated and therefore never became an officer. He admits that he didn’t have any powers of concentration, was easily diverted, had no study habits and was a very slow reader.

“I think I have a very good education and my social life was spectacular,” said Grover while emphasizing the word spectacular.

He stayed in Chapel Hill and worked at a hotel, but when the manager suggested it was time for him to move on, he decided to come back north, closer to his parents who lived in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Atlantic City was where he found home in 1956 and secured employment as a desk clerk at the Shelburne, a hotel resort located on Michigan Avenue and the Boardwalk making approximately $60 a week.

“Atlantic City at that point still was famous for its boardwalk hotels,” he said.

For Grover, cruising around the city in the 1960s “was a lot of fun.” He would frequent the Northside bars where they stayed open 24 hours and where liquor was cheaper.

“A single drink was 26 cents,” he explained.

Kentucky Avenue was the place to be. “KY and the Curb” was what the locals called it. Music flowed into the street from bars like Club Harlem and Grace’s Little Belmont.

“People would deliberately drive down Kentucky Avenue and block traffic so that you could see and be seen,” he said.

He married Aurora Dorado, a woman he met while working at the hotel, but it wasn’t for love. She was from Spain and on the verge of being deported. They spent the first half of their marriage mostly apart — her in San Francisco and him in Atlantic City — but they kept in touch over the years and she would stay with him as she traveled to and from Spain.

While his social life was taking shape his career in the hotel business wasn’t. He decided to leave for a job at the post office which offered benefits and a retirement plan.

He started when he was 38 years old, eventually got his own mail route, and with his outgoing personality, he developed an extended family with the people he served.

“That exercise and fresh air outdoors couldn’t have been more beneficial,” he said of his 22 years as a letter carrier.

Once he retired at the age of 60, he and his wife spent more time together and traveled, visiting the fjords of Norway, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong.

“It was really a wonderful relationship.” They decided not to have children, explained Grover, because of their love to travel.

They were married for 47 years before she died 14 years ago. Not long after, he became a volunteer at the lighthouse and at Boardwalk Hall helping to restore the ballroom organ.

“I had talked about volunteering (at the lighthouse) because I lived close to it for more than 20 years now, and I knew several of the volunteers.”

He was introduced to Muchanic during the Lighthouse Challenge, a two-day event to visit 10 New Jersey lighthouses, and started the next Friday.

While volunteering at Boardwalk Hall, Grover worked on refinishing, and painting the floors in the ballroom and remembers saying at the time “this organ is 80 years old and I’m 82. I’m older than dirt.”

He left when they changed curators and the shop closed.

At the lighthouse, he could let his personality shine as bright as the light — that once shone 19.5 nautical miles out to sea — he educates people about.

“He’s the face that people think of when they think of the Absecon Lighthouse, he’s the recognizable person,” said Milton Glenn, operations & education coordinator for the lighthouse.

To this day it’s still the visitors who come from all over the country that keep him coming back. As a Friday shift in March came to a close, he rattled off the details of some of the people he met, his memory still sharp as a tack.

“I’ve had a couple from Illinois, a couple from Iowa. A woman, born in Virginia, currently lives in New Orleans, and she’s on her way to Florida. Having lunch at the Knife and Fork.”

He even went parasailing last year with a family he met on the job.

He is so beloved that for sale in the lighthouse gift shop are T-shirts with a picture of a smiling Grover with “I met Buddy” written over his head.

They sell like mad, said Muchanic.

Grover said he has lived like a king, is not sure why he has been spared, and hopes he is serving some kind of good.

“I’m not afraid of dying. I don’t want to, you know,” he said, adding that he is not ready because he still has a lot of loose papers to organize.

Though not a very religious man, he prays every night.

“I discovered years ago that saying prayers is like a mantra, it rids your mind of whatever things during the day that might have annoyed you.”

Grover counts his steps in Spanish to keep the language alive in him, but he will only make the count on Fridays now and will fill in when needed.

“Climbing 228 steps, a little more than 17 stories is just what the doctor ordered.”

Muchanic said Grover possesses a certain “Je ne sais quoi” that she can’t put her finger on, and has figured out how to live life to the fullest.

“If it were a recipe, we would all benefit by having a bowl of it,” Muchanic said.