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Connecting To The Moment
When Tim McCall was in the eighth grade, his class covered a disaster unit. As part of the curriculum, class members were to complete a project based on a particular disaster. Someone happened to recommend that McCall complete his project on the SS Fitzgerald.
McCall found himself deeply interested in the disaster and found the best way to present all of the information he researched was through a website — a site that continues to flourish 18 years after its creation. Its success is due to the focus on a central component that so many missed over the years: the families.
“I think they probably thought: This is a 14-year-old kid. He doesn’t have an ulterior motive,” McCall recalled. “So before you knew it I was starting to get a side of the story that wasn’t available to a lot of people, which drew even more people to the website, and it led to even more family members finding it.”
The site McCall created not only helped families share their stories about their loved ones, but it also helped those on the outside comprehend their loss and view the shipwreck as a tragedy rather than just a mystery to obsess over. McCall’s site has now been live on the internet for 18 years, and he anticipates that it will only continue to grow as people continue to search for more details on those individuals whose lives were lost.
