Remembrance ceremony for sailors kicks off festival
by Angie Asam–Staff Writer
With Nautical Festival upon us there is plenty of excitement in the air. Tuesday the festival kicked off with a more solemn feeling as the sailors’ memorial was held at the band shell at Lakeside Park.
The Rogers City Kiwanis Club plans the event designed to remember the sailors who lost their lives in the Carl D. Bradley and Cedarville tragedies that greatly shaped the communities past.
The Rev. Dr. Robert Case, interim minister at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Rogers City as well as the Grand Lake Chapel, was on hand to give an invocation before the ceremony began. Case discussed the word remember and reminded the crowd gathered that by changing the word to “re-member”, meaning to come together, to rebuild.
The community was greatly affected when men’s lives were lost in two shipwreck tragedies.
Retired captain Richard Peacock then took over to read the names of the men who lost their lives, first aboard the Carl D. Bradley with survivor Frank Mays ringing the bell for those men, then for the Cedarville
Following the bell-ringing portion of the ceremony the captains and chief engineers gathered taking the wreath to the memorial site in Lakeside Park. featuring the shiprelics propeller and anchor, and laid it before the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 607 color guard fired a salute and played “Taps.”
Rogers City mayor Tom Sobeck also offered a few words prior to the ceremony. Miss Rogers City Victoria Bullock introduced her court, the captains and chief engineers were introduced as were each of the members of the VFW color guard gathered there.