Storm - Tale of the Edmund Fitzgerald and Other Shipwrecks
Visual and Performing Arts
The Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center is proud to announce a special historical performance, Storm, featuring maritime historian Ric Mixter and musician Dan Hall. The concert will take place on Friday, October 24 at 7:30 p.m. in Jamrich Hall 1100 on the campus of Northern Michigan University. The event is free and open to the public. Donations will be encouraged and greatly appreciated.
Gordon Lightfoot turned the Great Lakes’ largest shipwreck into a legend, but his version of the story is more fiction than fact. Historian Ric Mixter has spent thirty years interviewing people who built, sailed, and searched for the “Mighty Fitz” when it vanished 100 miles from Marquette on November 10th, 1975, and his findings have led him to become the most viewed expert on the disaster.
Mixter returns to his hometown of Marquette on October 24th with musician Dan Hall to tell the Fitzgerald story in a most unique way- with Dan’s custom music on key characters in the storm and with Ric’s exclusive interviews from those who were eyewitnesses to the search and discoveries made 550 feet below Lake Superior. Why didn’t the Fitz make it to Whitefish Point? Ric separates the myths of the loss with data and interviews while narrating incredible new songs about the most famous ship to sail the lakes.
Mixter was the media coordinator for the controversial Delta dive to the shipwreck in July of 1994, and he will share behind the scenes information on the discovery of a lost sailor who was wearing a lifejacket when lost. His frank discussion is done tastefully and the entire event is suitable for the entire family.
Ric and Dan have toured extensively with their concert series STORM, being featured on Mackinac Island, Cheboygan, Traverse City and a half dozen other concert venues. Ric has toured two countries and even NASA telling stories of the Great Lakes, after a 30-year broadcast career that began at WMQT Q-107 and WLUC TV6 back in the early 1980s. He was born at KI Sawyer and even flew the last B-52 from that base when it closed Air Force operations in 1995.
