The Lighthouse Keeper Who Never Left

In 1989, Hurricane Hugo barreled toward Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, with 140-mile-per-hour winds. Most residents evacuated. But the old Charleston Light — a triangular steel tower built to withstand exactly this kind of fury — stood unmoved at the island's edge. When the storm surge swallowed the beach and ripped houses from their foundations, the lighthouse never shifted. Families who had sheltered in its shadow emerged to find destruction all around them, yet the tower itself bore only scratches.…