DETROIT – Mariners’ Church of Detroit held its 59th annual Great Lakes Memorial Service on Sunday.
The occasion honors and remembers 30,000 people who have died in the Great Lakes and on Michigan’s waters over the years. The somber tradition remembered the more than 6,000 Great Lakes shipwrecks and thousands of sailors who have lost their lives.
“I’m very patriotic. I’m very emotional when it comes to things like this,” said Patti Mitrowski, who serves in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. She also retired from the as a U.S. Coast Guard officer after serving 27 years. “I think this is one way of saying, ‘Thank you.’”
Each death a reminder of how risky the open waters can be whether a sailor, maritime professional or someone recreationally enjoying the waterways. The church also shares a connection to the sinking of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald which is memorialized in Gordon Lightfoot’s ballad, “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” The annual service is held on the date it sunk.
“As Gordon Lightfoot’s song said, ‘We’re the Maritime Cathedral.’ So, we feel a pretty big responsibility to honor those sailors because of the loss that means for -- not just their families -- but for the community,” Rev. Todd Meyer said.
The service not only looks to the past, but the future. Their prayer? That there will be no more wrecks and deaths on the lakes ever again.
“As a church, we are trusting in God that He would protect our sailors and -- thanks be to God we’ve had very few wrecks that have taken life since the 60s it’s gone exponentially down so we continue to pray and a lot of that has to do with technology and weather forecasting, but we also just ask God to protect,” the pastor said.
