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Kevin FinkbeinerFollow1 min read·Jan 8, 2023 --

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I was born and raised in Michigan; we would spend the summer up North at our cabin mostly in the tip of the Lower Peninsula near Mackinaw, but we would always make a special trip to the

Upper Peninsula to visit one place, without fail: Whitefish Point.

Standing on the shore amongst all the twisted driftwood, you don't initially get the feeling that miles and miles from where you're standing lie hundreds of wrecked ships, and the hundreds

of lost souls, that Lake Superior alone has claimed over the centuries. Seventeen miles from shore is where the Fitzgerald lies.

The most tragic thing? How does a family find closure? Who, or what, is blamed? Usually when death comes, you know why. With the forces of nature, I don't think there's a way to find out

why. It's always so senseless.

The Fitzgerald's bridge bell is enshrined in the historic lighthouse museum on the shore. My Dad told me the story when I was young, and he played the song for me. I was born twenty years

after the tragedy, but the story still hauntingly resurfaces in my mind whenever Lightfoot's tune plays again.

I only hope the memories of those 29 men continue to survive the sands of time. Even though we mostly think of the sinking today in a monolithic sense, much like the Titanic, we so easily

forget that each life lost was once a person, with thoughts, feelings, loves, goals, and experiences, that were all cut short. That's the saddest thing, and that's what shouldn't be lost to

time.