ELLSWORTH — The retired Coast Guardsman who many credit with founding the lighthouse preservation movement in America has died.

Ken Black, 1973

Black was the founder and longtime curator of the Shore Village Museum. The museum maintained the largest collection of lighthouse lenses and apparatus in the United States. In 2004, the collection was transferred to the new Maine Lighthouse Museum on the Rockland waterfront.

Black spent 32 years in the U.S. Coast Guard, retiring in 1973 as commander of the Rockland Station. During World War II, Black saw action with the Coast Guard during the invasion of Okinawa. In the intervening years he served throughout the Great Lakes and New England, commanding the cutter Ojibwa and a lightship stationed in New

England waters, and serving as commanding officer of the U.S. Coast Guard station at Quoddy Head in Lubec.

During the 1960s, the Coast Guard began decommissioning many of the lighthouses that guarded the nation’s coasts, and replacing the equipment in formerly manned facilities with automated gear. Recognizing that a significant part of America’s maritime history was in danger of destruction, Black began collecting lighthouse paraphernalia around the time he was stationed in Boston. By the time he retired as commanding officer of the Rockland station in 1973, what had begun as a collection of postcards had grown to include lighthouse artifacts in which the Coast Guard had no interest.

Black retired in 1973, but his collection, housed on the grounds of the Rockland Coast Guard base, continued to grow. When a the Coast Guard built a new station in Rockland in 1976, Black moved his collection to the old Grand Army Hall on Limerock, and founded the Shore Village Museum. By the time the collection was moved in 2005, it included several extremely valuable Fresnel lenses, as well as enormous fog bells and other apparatus.

Although Black moved away from the sea, to Union, after his retirement, he never abandoned it. He often took command of the retired lightship Nantucket as it sought a home somewhere on the coast of New England. For many years during, with Black on the bridge, the lightship served as the committee boat for the Great Schooner Race, marking the seaward end of the finish line off the Rockland breakwater lighthouse.

Black received wide recognition for his preservation efforts. Among the honors he received for his work are the Coast Guard “Public Service Commendation,” the Harbour Lights “Lifetime Achievement” award, and the American Lighthouse Foundation’s “Keeper of the Light” award.

Last year, at the dedication of the CWO Kenneth black Exhibition Hall at the Maine Lighthouse Museum, the Foundation for Coast Guard History gave Black a special honor for saving hundreds of lighthouse artifacts for posterity.

Black is survived by his wife Dorothy (Dot), two stepsons and three grandsons.

A funeral service will be held at the Maine Lighthouse Museum in Rockland on Thursday, Feb. 1, at 11 a.m.