Rooms With a View By Molly Harrison

Originally published in Our State, November 2007, page 80. Reprinted with permission from Our State magazine and from the author, Molly Harrison.

When tourism became big business on Hatteras Island, the Hoopers were among the first to welcome guests at the Lighthouse View. Today, their grandchildren continue that family hospitality.

If you don’t already remember firsthand, try to imagine what Hatteras Island was like prior to the 1950s. That was back in time before the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge was built over the Oregon Inlet, before the Cape Hatteras National Seashore was officially created, and even before N.C. Highway 12 was paved down the spine of the island.

After crossing the Oregon Inlet on Toby Tillett’s rustic ferry, a car trip down the island was a bumpy ride on a desert-like landscape, fraught with the possibility of getting stuck. You could “ride the wash” alongside the surf if the tide was low or follow the tire-rut tracks in the sand on the “inside road” on the interior of the island. Another choice was the Manteo-Hatteras Bus Line, offering a similarly jaunty experience down the sand banks.

Along the length of the island, the oceanfront was barren, even in the villages, as the locals wouldn’t have dreamed of living in the harsh conditions along the ocean, preferring instead to live on the sound side or in protected wooded areas.

In the small villages, there wasn’t much of a welcome mat laid out for visitors in terms of hotels and restaurants because not too many people visited. Only outdoorsy types, hunters and anglers mostly, found it worth their while to trek down the sandy stretches of the island, where a few accommodations awaited them in Hatteras Village.

In 1947, the state of North Carolina began paving sections of N.C. Highway 12 along the island, and in 1952 the entire path was completed, from Oregon Inlet to Hatteras Inlet. Paved highway access changed Hatteras Island. For the first time, carloads of visitors began lining up at the Oregon Inlet ferry, waiting their turn to drive down the new, paved road and see what legendary Hatteras Island was all about.

The line at the ferry got even longer after 1953, when the National Park Service officially established the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the nation’s first seashore park, bringing national attention to the wonders of this isolated barrier island.

It was time to start welcoming the tourists.

Lighthouse connection

The Hooper family was one of the first Hatteras families to serve as host to the new influx of visitors. In 1952, John Edgar Hooper, a resident of Buxton, built an oceanfront cottage on land given to him by his wife’s sister, Maude White. This was the beginning of the Lighthouse View Court motel.

Hooper family lore has it that White, who was the postmistress and the unofficial “mayor” of Buxton, had bought a sizeable stretch of oceanfront land for $75. White gave her sister, Annie Miller Hooper, who was married to John Edgar Hooper, and her daughter plots of land on which to build oceanfront motels.

John Edgar and Annie Hooper had spent several years off-island, in Stumpy Point and Norfolk, Virginia, due to the tough nature of making a living on Hatteras. But after World War II the Hoopers came back to Hatteras Island, this time settling in Buxton Woods. In the early 1950s, with the tourist industry barely budding but with much talk of it blossoming in the future, starting a hotel seemed like a good investment for the Hoopers.

The Lighthouse View was on a barren piece of land on the north end of Buxton. The property offered not only ocean views but also, as you might have guessed by the name, great views of the lighthouse, as there was not a single building between the motel and the light.

John Edgar Hooper expanded his motel slowly and carefully, adding on one cottage per season. From 1952 to 1963, he built nine cottages, which totaled about 30 individual units. The motel was what’s known on the Outer Banks as a “cottage court,” a collection of individual cottages with centralized services.

John Edgar Hooper’s inn-keeping philosophy was to offer a comfortable, value-oriented vacation right next to the beach. He did just about everything himself, from greeting the customers personally to doing handyman maintenance.

His son, Edgar O. Hooper, who had also moved to Buxton Village after working at Norfolk Naval Shipyard and serving overseas in World War II, ran a general store called Fuller’s and Hooper’s General Store. But as the motel business grew, Edgar helped out more in his father’s business, and Edgar’s three children were always there, too.

John Robert remembers that people’s beach vacations were different back then. There weren’t many choices of places to stay on Hatteras, but still many of the customers rented rooms by walking in off the street. The weekers, those who stayed for a week or longer, communicated with the Hoopers by mail. It was quite common for families to stay for as long as two or three weeks, spending all their time on the beach or on their porches in the ocean breeze.

In the 1950s, the Lighthouse View was a sociable place. Whether it was fishermen or families, with everyone out on their porches, guests knew all their neighbors by the end of the week.

When the Bonner Bridge was completed over Oregon Inlet in 1963, Hatteras Island was in for more dramatic change. No longer impeded by a slow ferry ride, daytrippers and weekenders streamed onto the island. “The island became a giant playground for everyone from Nags Head and beyond,” says John Robert.

More motels, restaurants, and shops popped up on Hatteras Island, and the Lighthouse View grew to about 25 cottages to meet the demands of more visitors. Soon after, another drastic change occurred at the Lighthouse View: air-conditioning.

“When we got air-conditioning in 1964 or ’65, people stopped sitting on their porches and went inside,” says John Robert. “Air-conditioning individualized people. They didn’t make friends like they used to.”

Next generation

After college, John Robert returned to Hatteras Island and worked as a commercial fisherman while his grandfather and father continued to operate the Lighthouse View.

In the mid-1980s, the Hoopers made the decision to expand the motel and bought additional acreage along the oceanfront adjacent to the motel. John Edgar Hooper, who had passed away in the early ’80s, never saw the expansion. John Robert helped his father build the new cottages, and that’s when the third generation became part of the family business.

John Robert’s help was especially needed in 1993, when Hurricane Emily struck Hatteras Island. Storms are a way of life on Hatteras, and the Hooper family had endured many hurricanes, but this one hit them hard. The sound waters washed completely over the island, and the original motel cottages were destroyed.

Rather than seeing it as a setback, Edgar and John Robert saw it as an opportunity to modernize and upgrade their facilities to compete with the increasing number of motels on the island. Now known as Lighthouse View Oceanfront Lodging, today there are 85 units, ranging from motel rooms to one-bedroom villas to four-bedroom cottages.

Besides the new buildings, the character of the Lighthouse View is much the same today as it was when John Edgar Hooper first opened the motel. The Hooper family hospitality has been drawing some customers back for more than 50 years. John Robert still sees some of the kids he played with when he was young, now returning with their children for a week at the beach.

David Katz of Utica, New York, has been to the Lighthouse View every year since 1971, when he first came at age 14 with his parents from New Jersey. “We thought this place was paradise compared to the Jersey shore,” he says.

Katz and his six siblings continue the tradition with their families every year, renting several Lighthouse View cottages all on the same street. “All I can tell you is that we have a personal connection with the people who work here,” says Katz. “They are good, decent people with good service, and that keeps us coming back. It’s not broke, so we don’t fix it.”

Carol McNew of Portsmouth, Virginia, has been coming to the Lighthouse View with her family for 21 years, usually at least three times a year. McNew knew Edgar Hooper and says the family hospitality is what keeps her family coming back.

“Over the years, the thing that has stood out is how nice and accommodating they are. There’s nothing you could want that they wouldn’t get for you,” says McNew.

“I remember once when our vehicle broke down, and John loaned us his. They’re so accommodating. It’s always been that way, even with John’s daddy.”

A new day

For John Robert, the job of running the Lighthouse View isn’t the same job his grandfather or father had. Times have changed, and the third generation has a whole new set of challenges.

“Before, we had the luxury of people coming to us,” says John Robert. “Now we have more competition, and there’s the Internet, which has changed this business. My grandfather and father were very hands-on with the customers. They knew everyone. I spend more and more time in my office dealing with today’s business issues.”

It’s John’s wife, Tracey, at the front desk who has the personal contact with the customers these days. And whereas John Edgar and Edgar may have had one or two staff people, John Robert has as anywhere from 10 to 20 employees to manage, depending on the season.

John Hooper has hopes that a fourth generation will one day take their place at the Lighthouse View the way the second and third generations did. His daughter has a degree in hospitality management from East Carolina University and lives on the island, but so far she has yet to make the leap into the family business.

“This business has been good to the Hooper family,” says John Robert. And the Hoopers have made sure it has also has been good to the vacationers of Hatteras Island.