Necrology

J. Candace Clifford '83

Nov. 3, 1960-Aug. 15, 2018

J. Candace Clifford ’83, a prominent lighthouse historian and researcher of Alexandria, Va., was born on Nov. 3, 1960, in Princeton, N.J., the daughter of Robert and Mary Louise Clifford.

On College Hill, Clifford majored in history and put her degree to good use after graduation when she took a job with the National Park Service Maritime Heritage Program. She turned an early assignment to compile an inventory of U.S. lighthouses into a published book, 1994 Inventory of Historic Light Stations.

    Clifford would go on to become a leading expert in U.S. lighthouses. “Ask anyone deeply involved in lighthouse preservation to name the nation’s top lighthouse researcher and you’ll hear one name — Candace Clifford,” notes the U.S. Lighthouse Society on its website. “With unparalleled knowledge of the National Archives lighthouse section, she was a critically important consultant to the National Park Service Maritime Heritage Program from 1988 to 2001, and was primarily responsible for its databases, resource surveys, and inventories, ultimately producing the first Historic Lighthouse Preservation Handbook.”

A prolific writer, Clifford co-wrote several lighthouse books with her mother, including Women Who Kept the Lights: An Illustrated History of Female Light Keepers. Although lighthouses were the focus of her research, she wrote on a range of topics, co-authoring Great American Ships with James P. Delgado, books on countries where she had traveled, and historical fiction for children.

Most recently Clifford worked with the U.S. Lighthouse Society as its historian, assisting with the creation of the largest lighthouse-related research archive in the United States, to be named in her honor, according to a published obituary. A fitting tribute to a woman whose career came upon her apparently by happenstance. “I was not acutely aware of lighthouses early in life, but have always loved the water,” she was quoted as saying in a 2005 article in the Lighthouse Digest magazine.

J. Candace Clifford, who also found time to volunteer in support of fundraising efforts for her alma mater, died on Aug. 15, 2018. She was 57 years old. Clifford is survived by her mother, a brother, and a niece and a nephew.

 

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