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Rounding up
,ermont Harbor home ill carries the torch r Coast’s lively history
TWr
IAN PATTON EHRBRIGHT
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LERMONT HARBOR — It takes a while for first-time tors to Mary and Delmer Wilcox’s spacious home site lotice the manicured lawn, the fruit trees and the round yes, round two-story house.
ITie eyes focus first on the "lighthouse.”
Hie 40-foot-taII, white stuccoed structure was built inn the winter of 1942-1943 by Mary Wilcox’s father, gh Turner Carr. It served as an observation station -mg World War II; volunteer civil defense workers ,nned the telephone-equipped tower during daylight urs.
After the war, the volunteers received citations for their contribution to the defense effort.
"The tower was right on the beam between Keesler and New Orleans,” Mary Wilcox said. They would call the Third Fighter Command and report very plane that Dew over.”
Volunteers also reported sightings from a lighted instru-nent station at the St. Stanislaus High School pier in Bay it. Louis.
The Clermont Harbor tower’s official name is Osbom 5. But “everyone calls it a lighthouse,” Wilcox said.
She remembers the many drills and blackouts during hose years.
"They used to talk about submarines out in the Gulf.”
Dnce visible, now it’s hidden
At that time, the shoreline three blocks away was clearly visible from the tower. Since then, trees have grown tall enough to obscure the view.
A stately Live oak standing next to the tower is a seedling from the Coast’s famous Friendship Oak on the USM campus in I^ong Beach.
"Now, you can’t see much but roof tops, ’’ Wilcox said. "You can see one little spot of beach."
The sturdy tower still features the original railing along its winding 49-step staircase.
Carr, a native of the Virginia hills, came to the Coast in 1925 to remodel the luxurious 13-year-old Clermont Harbor Hotel on Front Street.
He bought the property that is now the Wilcox home in the 1930s and opened a sawmill and Clermont Harbor Lumber Co.
“The war put him out of business about 1941,” Wilcox said. “The government said no more lumber for homes. ” Carr, who already had experience as an antiques dealer, went back into that business.
Alice Bell Prindiville described Carr as “dealer in antiques, antiquarian par exellence, craftsman hors con-cours” in her article about him in the March-April 1953 issue of “Down South,” a bi-monthly published in Biloxi.
The unnamed but disastrous hurricane of 1947 ruined the Carr house, Wilcox said. High winds broke windows in the top of the tower. But the structure itself was undamaged.
“The water washed around it,” Wilcox said.
Carr built a roomy circular area around the bottom of the tower and used it for temporary living quarters while he rebuilt the house, making it circular, too.
“He did it all on paper first,” Wilcox said.
The Wilcoxes bought the property from Carr in 1965. “He really wanted to go back to the mountains,” his daughter said. “Instead, he moved about 30 miles north into the county.”
Carr was 88 when he died in 1984.
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Wilcox, who paints, said her father chose woodwork for his creative outlet.
The Clermont Harbor home has several magnificent examples of his craft: a cypress table and a four-poster, canopy bed.
And, of course, the lighthouse.
There’s a new purpose
The area that served as a temporary refuge for the Carr family is now a workshop and storage space.
“At one time, a grandchild suggested we take everything out and make it a skating rink,” Wilcox said.
Instead, the sheltered lower part of the tower has become a stucco canvas for more family art.
Wilcox told her nine grandchildren they could paint murals around the tower.
“I told them to choose a spot, ” she said. “There’s lots of space. They can do this for years, if they want”
■	An old magazine article features Hugh Turner Carr. The light house that he built, now owned by his daughter Mary Wilcox, was used as an observation station during WWII.