In The Shadow Of The Lighthouse- Bessie DuBois, Feb. 21, 1903 – June 4, 1998

Bessie Wilson DuBois didn’t just write about the history of the Jupiter Inlet area. She and her husband lived through most of its modern history.
DuBois once said the day she arrived in 1914 as an 11-year-old, she heard what sounded like people applauding in a theater. It was mullet boiling in the pristine Jupiter Inlet.
Jupiter was then a tiny town of 300 surrounding the famed lighthouse. In 1925, Bessie married John DuBois, one of four children of a pioneer couple. She wanted to be a writer, but four children came first. In 1929, she and John opened a restaurant by their home, serving fried chicken, oysters and mullet caught from the Loxahatchee River.
World War II rationing forced them to close in 1942, but Bessie and her family awoke at 2 a.m. to bake pies for John to take to nearby Camp Murphy, now Jonathan Dickinson State Park. They also ran a fish camp until 1972.
When a daughter died of leukemia in 1955, Bessie found solace in a study of local history; she would write five small but comprehensive books about life on the Loxahatchee River, conduct many slide shows, and take part in historical groups. Even when her eyesight failed in her later years, she would still entertain visitors with lively stories of her beloved river, inlet and lighthouse.
“I wonder what’s going to become of Florida?” she once asked. “Is it going to be like the Florida we once used to know?”
John DuBois died in 1987, Bessie in 1998. A nearby county park bears theirname.
- ELIOT KLEINBERG