Fort Morgan is a favorite spot for history buffs, but for one Baldwin County family, the history there is personal.

In 1938, a newly married couple, Charles and Marie Dean, moved to Fort Morgan so Charles could be the groundskeeper at the historic fort.

Marie was only a senior in high school when she married her sweetheart, and she began attending school at Foley High School as soon as the couple moved to the area. When she learned the lighthouse keeper's children couldn't go to school because they didn't have a way to get there — back then school buses didn't travel all the way to Fort Morgan — she began picking them up on the way.

“There was no way they could get to school,” says Charles and Marie's son Richard Dean, who lives in Fairhope. “It was either homeschooling or no schooling. Most of those kids went to work as soon as they were old enough.”

Soon, all the children in the area heard about Marie and wanted rides, too.

So Marie and Charles found an old school bus and put new tires on it, and Marie transported all of the children living on Fort Morgan Road to school.

But providing free transportation to school was just part of the couple's contribution to the Fort Morgan community. They also had a kerosene refrigerator — the only one on the peninsula — and everyone used it. Charles also took the local children fishing, which was unusual for a man to do at the time, Richard says.

During World War II, the government started collecting anything that could be melted down and used for making war ships. This included the old cannons at Fort Morgan.

“There used to be a cannon with roses on either side of the tunnel going into the fort, plus a big naval gun,” Richard says. “He didn't want them to take them, so he saved them by burying them in the sand. He hooked them to his truck and drove forward, and they were buried that way. He put an oleander bush over one of them — actually, he planted almost all those oleanders over there.”

Charles later uncovered them before Richard was born at Dr. Holmes' office in downtown Foley in 1941 and the family moved to Mobile. Richard says the guns remained at Fort Morgan for years, but they are gone now.

“I have no idea where they went,” he says.

Charles spent the rest of his career working at at Brookley Field, but he always said the years at Fort Morgan were some of the best of his life.