One of the great joys of writing my memoir Royal Roots is hearing from readers who resonate with the stories. In my new memoir, I eventually found through research what caused my dad’s mind to disassemble during an incident in WWII. For reader Christopher Moore Griffin, our own discoveries bring reader and writer to the same heart space. The feeling is one of a sense of compassion and humanity.

Christopher’s brother Kevin R. Griffin was an 18-year-old sailor in 1970 on the USS Steinaker when he was washed overboard just two days out to sea. In 2016, Christopher and a friend decided to finally uncover how this happened as the family did not know. They used the internet. 

They eventually connected with another sailor, an actual eyewitness. He explained in detail what occurred on that fateful day of rebelling and roiling seas. It is a harrowing account but this sentence about his brother from the eyewitness had to offer Christopher the words he yearned for since he was 17 years old, “He was lost but not because every effort was not expended.”

Forty-six years later, those words, as a literary funeral coffin pall, properly laid to rest Kevin Griffin.