STORM, a historical multi-media performance on Great Lakes storms and shipwrecks, will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 24, in Jamrich Hall 1100 at Northern Michigan University. It is hosted by NMU's Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center. Maritime historian Ric Mixter returns to his hometown of Marquette with musician Dan Hall to tell the Edmund Fitzgerald story in a unique way: with Hall's custom music on key characters in the storm and Mixter's exclusive interviews from those who were eyewitnesses to the search and discoveries made 550 feet below Lake Superior.
Gordon Lightfoot turned the Great Lakes' largest shipwreck into a legend, but his version of the story is more fiction that fact. Historian Ric Mixter has spent 30 years interviewing people who built, sailed and searched for the “Mighty Fitz” when it vanished 100 miles from Marquette on Nov. 10th, 1975. His findings have led him to become the most viewed expert on the disaster.
Why didn't the Fitz make it to Whitefish Point? Mixter separates the myths of the loss with data and interviews while narrating 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 1994. He will share behind-the-scenes information on the discovery of a sailor who was wearing a lifejacket when lost. His frank discussion is done tastefully and the entire event is suitable for the entire family.
The duo have toured extensively with their concert series STORM, being featured on Mackinac Island, Cheboygan, Traverse City and a half dozen other concert venues. Mixter 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.
This performance complements the "Gales of November: Shipwrecks on Lake Superior" exhibition on display at the Beaumier Center in Gries Hall at NMU through Dec. 20.