Hi Friends - It's been a year since Dad went into the hospital and then passed in June. The bulk of his ashes are buried in Fort Snelling National Cemetery, but all of us knew he would want to be in the water, too. Last summer, I brought a small urn to Lake Superior. Today, Katie took a similar urn (in his favorite color - purple) down Gerard Drive, past the home in which he grew up, to Accabonac Harbor, better known as "Bonac Creek, " after the Algonquin name Accabonac, meaning "root place."  

"The crick" is where Dad grew up...where he (and later, me, Mom, and Katie) learned how to fish, dig for clams, and go duck hunting. It's where our family truly put down roots and called home since arriving on its shores from Connecticut in 1648. So many family memories occurred here, that we wanted a part of Dad to be home. 

And in similar fashion, Katie is bringing some Bonac sand back to Wisconsin to be rubbed into the engravings on his tombstone. 

Later in the summer, Dad's Coast Guard and Marine Patrol buddy Ed Michels will take his last bit of ashes out to the big water. At that point, he will have come full circle: from Bonac as a young kid, to the Coast Guard as a young man, to Lake Superior in his later years, to Fort Snelling as his final rest. 

 - Kris