David Paul Kastl, Jr., helped to save Diane M. Kastl from drowning, Gulliver, Michigan, July 3, 1983. Diane, 14, was swept into deep water of Lake Michigan by a strong undertow. Her brother, David, 17, high school student, and her mother took a raft 40 feet through rough water to Diane and managed to get her onto it. A wave washed David away. The mother and Diane paddled to shore. David’s body was recovered a week later.
59757 – 6886
59757-6886Obituary
David Kastl, Jr., risked his life, and Lake Michigan’s rough and cold waters took it. The 17-year-old Southgate, Mich., youth plunged into the lake on July 3, 1983, to rescue his two younger sisters, who were struggling in the 50-degree water and 10-foot waves. The girls were saved, but David drowned. A search party, headed by his father, David Sr., discovered his body some 300 yards from where he went under.
Mr. Kastl said he and his family had been vacationing at their summer home on Lake Gulliver in the Upper Pensinsula when the accident occurred. David, who would have begun his senior year in high school the following September, was “fascinated” by big trucks and had spent a great deal of time constructing models and painting a mural of a semi-tractor trailer on a bedroom wall. The young man had been majoring in drafting in his school studies.
(Edited from an article in the Detroit News, July 14, 1983)