Sunday October 23, 2011 I was at work at around 1:45 pm when my phone popped up saying I had a facebook message from my neighbor Katie, the message was sent to me and my brother and said something along the lines of "I need one of you to call me asap it's kind of an emergency" I thought to myself maybe she was locked out or forgot to turn off the oven, or lock the doors.. worst case scenario I thought something was wrong with her house or her family. I called her to see what was going on and she sounded shocked and was stuttering trying to get the words out of her mouth, she said that she didn't know how to tell me what she was about to tell me but the police were at my house and something was wrong with my dad's boat. She didn't know details because she wasn't even home, her mom was home and didn't have my cell number which is why Katie contacted me over facebook. I got ahold of Mary and she informed me the police were looking to talk to someone because they found my dad's boat out on Lake Erie near Cedar Point (where he docked his boat) and they said no one was on the boat so they were trying to locate my father. I immediately left work in a hurry calling my dad and his girlfriend Pam a ton of times screaming out loud for them to answer, but each time it went straight to voicemail. I was also worried because my dad had sprained his ankle a few weeks back, the last time he and Pam had been up at the boat for Labor Day weekend.

I didn't know for sure if they had been to the boat or not because they were home Friday night and Saturday morning before I went to work. And they went to the boat all the time, so they wouldn't even mention it, because I knew if they were gone for a weekend - they were at the boat. I got a hold of Pam's daughter, Codi who was away at school in PA. She said the last time she had spoken with her mom or my dad was earlier in the week on Wednesday, her mom mentioned her and my dad were going to go up to the boat that weekend to grab the last few things off the boat before my dad was having it winterized and stored for the winter. I was so freaked out and told Codi why I was asking and what was going on, telling her I didn't want to scare her but that I just thought she had the right to know. She was very calm and just said she would try and call her mom and see if any of her mom's friends or family had hear from her. At this point I was just about home, and still had not gotten ahold of my brother. I finally texted him one last time saying "Zach, call me right now. This is not a joke, call me."

I got home and a Solon Police Officer was waiting for me in my driveway with my neighbor Mary. We went into my house and he started to explain to me the situation as he had know as of that time. He said my dad's boat was found on Lake Erie and him nor Pam were found on the boat. They didn't know if they were even up at the boat, so I was thinking maybe the boat got loose or something like that. We got Pam's license plate information for the police since my dad's car was still at home in the garage so they had obviously taken Pam's car if they went. A few hours later we got word, her car was in the parking lot. My brother finally made it home and we were just trying to figure out what was going on.

I started to get information from the Coast Guard and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) that just kept getting worse. First, it was my dad's boat was found on the lake with no one inside. Then, it was it was found on the lake and it had crashed into the Cedar Point breakwall still with no one inside. Then, it was it was found on the lake, crashed into the cedar point breakwall, was capsized and sinking and they had no actually been able to get into the cabin because it was upside down and the area it was in was only 6 ft deep. Nothing was getting better, every way we tried to figure it out just didn't make sense. At this time Mary told me she thought I should start to talk to other members of my family including my sister Sarah who lived in Boston, but was at a friend's wedding in Detroit. She was at the airport with 5 minutes to board her flight back to Boston when I got ahold of her... I couldn't talk to her and made Mary do it, she told Sarah she thought she should look into coming home because it was starting to become an actual emergency. I talked more with Codi and she was figuring out a way to get back to Cleveland at that point. I called my dad's sister and brother and let them know the situation. My aunt immediately booked a flight into Cleveland from NYC for the next morning but would cancel if it was all just a big misunderstanding. Which at that point, I thought it still was.

As the day progressed things started to escalate. The news was starting to circulate that my dad's boat had been the one to crash into the break wall, his name and face were all over all of the new channels as breaking news. My dad's friends were calling after they heard the news and some of them had rushed over without even calling because they saw it online. I was in denial that anything was actually wrong because they had not found either of them. I was convinced something got loose and the boat just drifted away or I thought worse case scenario if something was wrong that they were on a raft floating on the lake and they would be found. So many people were there. Tons of my dad's friends, my mother, my brother, some of Codi's friends were there even though Codi wasn't there.. my neighbors.. just a ton of people there for support. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my dad's friend Andy, who was a fellow boater and a long time friend of my dad's. We had been on vacations with his family and would spend holidays together, and at the time I even had a 2nd job working for him as a receptionist at his orthodontic practice. I remember Andy looking at me and saying "We will help you." I had no response, all I could think was 'help with what? Why would we need help, everything will be fine.' it was so surreal that something like this could actually exist and was happening, and to our family.

Then around 7:30 pm I got another phone call from the coast guard, they then explained to me what they were doing and that they had gotten the boat flipped over, and towed to a marina in Sandusky called Battery Park. They told me they drained the boat and saw severe damage... I then asked if they found my dad or Pam. The woman on the other line said "Once we got the boat drained and investigators went in the cabin, they found the body of Pamela deceased on the boat". That moment was a blur, all I could remember doing was screaming and crying, I almost threw up, I fell to the ground screaming at the people on the phone. I don't know who picked me up but someone picked me up, grabbed the phone and took me over to the couch and just hugged me while I just sobbed and screamed. Everyone was so quiet, no one knew what to say. I knew then and there, that my dad was dead. If Pam was dead, my dad was dead. My brother finished talked with the coast guard who said their investigation and search for my dad would continue throughout the night. My brother and I were in shock, we sat in my dad's office together just crying to get away from everyone for a few minutes.

The next horrible thing I had to go through was telling Codi. She was not back in Cleveland yet and I had to be the one to tell her that her mother was dead. Codi had already experienced a tragic loss when she was a little girl, I think at the age of 2 her father passed away in a car fire. And now I had to tell her that her only other parent had also tragically died, and that my dad was still missing. My dad and Pam had dated for about 15 years, Codi is 20... so my dad was almost like her dad and they were very close. So she has had 3 parent figures in her life that are all now gone. When she got to my house my brother and I went to meet her at the end of the driveway because there were so many people inside. We didn't have to say anything, we just looked at her and I just said "I'm so sorry" and all she could say was "No No No No No" over and over and started crying and fell to the ground. Pam's parents had went to pick her up so we had to tell them as well. Sarah was not back in Cleveland yet, she had a layover in Chicago on her flight back into Cleveland and everytime she called we just told her we didn't know anything because we didn't want her to be sitting in an airport all alone having to find out that news. We waited until she got home and informed her.

We waited for hours with no word from the coast guard, it got late so my brother went back down to his apartment in Akron to sleep for the night because he didn't want to be at our house that night, since he would have to be there all week more than likely and wanted to just get away for a little bit. A few friends of mine came over and ended up falling asleep on the couches, while I just sat there. I finally was able to fall asleep around 3 am that morning, I woke up a few hours later around 6 am and immediately turned on the news. Top story was that the coast guard had suspended the search for my father for the time being. I called them and they said they had searched over 120 square miles and they felt that with the time frame and amount of damage to the boat he was more than likely dead. Later that afternoon the search had been officially called off.  

It has now been just over 4 months since my father has been gone and it has been a nightmare. His body has still not been found so we are stuck in limbo with the estate. We have to get a presumption of death from a judge to get it open. Until then, I am stuck paying all of the bills for the house out of my pocket on top of my own bills. We can't sell the house because it isn't in our name yet and no accounts are able to be opened. We have our hearing on May 1st of this year, which means over 7 months after my father's death we will finally be able to start to move on. It has been so horrible living in this house seeing my dad in everything and having his things all over the place. 

I have been struggling with moving forward and don't know what to do sometimes. I am a completely different person than I was 4 months ago. I used to go out with my friends on the weekends and go to concerts and do normal things. Now, I barely have any friends because I am so scared about going out in public and seeing people I haven't seen in months because I am scared they are going to try and talk to me about it, or even if they don't I will be wondering if they are thinking about it and that also makes me upset. My best friends haven't called or been over since my dad's memorial service which was less than a week after he went missing. I still get sad and cry all the time and I just feel so alone. I lost my dad, Pam and all my friends in the process. It's been very hard.

I really need support during this and found this website so I figured I would join. I know this was long, but I just really wanted to let everyone know the entire story on why I am here.