The Other Side of the Storm

Editor’s note: UPword Michigan and Rural Innovation Exchange have partnered with Interlochen Public Radio to share occasional news coverage in Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula.

Twenty-two year old Chris Parish and his dad, Francis, were on a beach on Lake Superior deciding whether or not to launch their fishing boat. The forecast was bad but nothing they hadn’t seen in their years fishing Whitefish Bay.

They had two options: make the 15-minute trip to get their nets before the storm rolled in, or risk losing them.

“If your nets get caught in a storm like that, they just get ripped to shreds,” said Chris. “Making one net like that — they were worth about $100 at that time. There was five nets, so that’s five hundred bucks.”

Five hundred dollars was a good chunk of change for a small fishing operation. So Chris and his dad motored out and started pulling the nets out of the water. But within a few minutes, the sky turned black and the wind picked up. They tried heading back to shore but the waves swelled and capsized their boat.

Chris and his dad held on to the capsized hull as the storm grew around them. If they didn’t get help soon, they were going to die.

This storm had built in the southern plains before ripping its way north into Lake Superior on November 10, 1975. And Chris and his dad weren’t the only ones caught in it: just miles away, a freighter called the SS Edmund Fitzgerald began to falter.

You can listen to the entire episode of “The Other Side of the Storm” here. Episodes of Points North are also available on Spotify.