Florida Folksingers Are Live-In Volunteers at Bill Baggs Park
Nancy Beth JacksonJanuary 2, 2020
Florida folk singers Marg Chauvin and Bill Messer volunteer at Lighthouse cottage. (Nancy Beth Jackson/Key News)
Florida folk singers Marg Chauvin and Bill Messer spend their days at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park maintaining the replica of an 1836 cottage and entertaining guests with tales of what a lighthouse tender’s life was like in the 19th century.
But they don’t leave when the park closes at sundown.
As resident volunteers, they call the state park home during a four-month stint ending in February. Tucked away near the administration building, they live in a 25-foot self-contained travel trailer, their full-time home since retiring seven years ago.
“They’re passionate about their work,” said Assistant Park Manager Lu Dodson, who herself began as a resident volunteer. “They each have over 5,000 hours volunteering with state park services.”
Primarily, Chauvin taps her teaching skills to engage visitors in local history. Nearly 600 visitors, some from as far away as Saudi Arabia, wandered through the cottage on recent Saturday. Other days, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, she can be found climbing ladders and picking up trash. Messer, 68, who spent his life painting and welding boats, is a wealth of information about the lighthouse and can handle any handyman chores that come his way. Some Sundays they give impromptu concerts on the cottage porch, often dressed in costume.
The East Coast Florida natives, who met sharing a ride to a 2002 folk festival, are self-taught musicians. Chauvin is a Florida master of the Scottish harp and also learned to play a second-hand ukulele when she wanted to make music on a float trip. Messer, never much for rock and roll, taught himself to play the guitar at age 30 with the help of a Jimmy Buffet songbook when he was living on a boat.
Their Heart Strings duo opened a Central Florida Folk Inc. concert in Winter Park in October 2019. Come May 21-26, they will be at the Florida Folk Festival at the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs. During the summers they venture farther afield.
Now 70, Chauvin discovered resident volunteering about 40 years ago when cycling down the California coast. At a campground “right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean,” she saw her future in the couple volunteering as camp hosts.
“When I retire, that’s what I’m going to be,” she decided on the spot.
Resident volunteers at Florida state parks work a minimum of 20 hours a week in exchange for a free campsite, which at Bill Baggs means basic utilities. Unlike some parks, Bill Baggs has no public overnight camping except for boats at No Name Harbor, which is listed as a primitive boat camp, not a marina.
This is the couple’s second stay at Bill Baggs in three years. “Bill applied even before there was a list,” Chauvin said.
Cliff and Sally Brody, former Key Biscayne residents, preceded them as resident volunteers this time around.
How to volunteer in Florida State Parks:
https://www.floridastateparks.org/volunteers
How to volunteer at national sites like the U.S. Forest Service:
