April 3, 2011
It's especially hard to mourn those who have died, especially when a body is never recovered.
On April 2, 2005, Murrells Inlet fisherman Johnny Brown and two others were off the coast of the Outer Banks in North Carolina when a rogue wave hit the boat. Two of Brown's shipmates were found, but Brown never was. For his mother, Brenda, dealing with the loss was unbearable.
"When we lost Johnny we had nowhere to go. No grave, no nothing," Brown says.
Since 2006, and every year since, Brenda Brown and her family attend a ceremony for a lost at sea monument the family helped erect. More names are added each year. The monument is paid for entirely by donations and has cost more than $10,000.
Brown says the ceremony gets both harder and easier each year.
"A couple of years ago I told my husband I don't think I can go through this. It's like a funeral for Johnny every year," she says. "But, when I see what it does for the other people, you have to keep doing it. It's now more for the other people."
Today, there are 28 names on the monument with the earliest "lost at sea" dating back to 1925.
"This makes it easier to go to. I put flowers there. It just means something to have somewhere to go," Brown says.
Sunday afternoon one additional name was added to the monument. Mark Shackelford, 51, was the Captain of a Murrells Inlet fishing boat. He was pronounced lost at sea April 29, 2010.
The U.S. Coast Guard searched for a day after receiving a call from the 28-foot fishing vessel Lady Die, saying Shackelford was missing. The crew member who made the report had been sleeping. When he woke the captain was gone.
For Shackelford's sister, Tracie Anderson, the monument will be something their family will continue to visit year after year. She's at a loss for words at today's ceremony. She says her family is still surrounded by grief, but coming here will help them heal.
"It just is so nice," she said.
