OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — Almost giddy with anticipation, Beverly Sherman stood arm-in-arm with longtime friends Dale and Dee Dee Steel on Tuesday afternoon.
They stood together on the shore of Lake Crescent next to U.S. Highway 101 for the first time in 43 years.
It was at milepost 223, the spot where the car in which they were riding slid off the road on an icy January 1960 night, nearly trapping them in chilly waters 60 feet below the surface.
Miraculously, Sherman, the Steels and another friend escaped from the sinking car, swam ashore and walked two miles down Highway 101 before being picked up by a passing truck and driven to safety in Forks.
Dale Steel’s 1950 Dodge sedan — submerged all these years in the deep waters of Lake Crescent — was located Aug. 31 by volunteers using high-tech underwater search gear.
The obvious next step, said Olympic National Park officials, was to retrieve personal effects locked in the car’s trunk for more than four decades.
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The rest of the story appears in Wednesday’s Peninsula Daily News.