It’s said you can’t fight City Hall or mess with Mother Nature. But that is exactly what a band of citizens forever remembered as “the Friends of Barnegat Light” spent 1921 doing.

The famed Barnegat Lighthouse was in danger of falling into the sea as the northern tip of Long Beach Island was being eroded by winter storms, partly caused by the government’s failure to remove the 1916 wreck of the Army transport Sumner, which had grounded off the beach, affecting local currents.

In July the Friends had convinced Herbert Hoover, a former engineer, to bring his sons to Barnegat Bay to enjoy some of…