A member
of the Women Divers Hall of Fame, Valerie has been involved in
shipwreck exploration and documentation for 20 years and is the
2007 recipient of the Historical Society of Michigan award for
excellence of achievement in the collection, preservation and
promotion of state and local history.
Valerie
is an accomplished writer who is a regular contributor to a
number of magazines and periodicals and is the author of
Icebound! The Adventures of Young George Sheldon and the
SS Michigan, and co-author of soon-to-be-released, From
Hennepin to the Thousand Footers. She has also written and directed more than a dozen
documentary films and has appeared on major television
news networks as well as the Discovery Channel.
She is a regular presenter at museums, libraries,
and film festivals sharing the dramatic stories of ships
gone missing on the Great Lakes. Her work has been featured in
numerous publications, news stories, the book,
Voices of the Sweetwater Seas by Bill Keefe and
Shipwreck Hunter by Gerry Volgenau. With business partner
William Lafferty, she expands of her belief that through
entertainment one can educate. Together they provide exhibit
design services for various museums.
Serving as
Director of Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates,
Valerie spearheads
the group's search for ships lost off Western
Michigan which has resulted in the discovery of ten new wreck
sites. In one of many
expeditions, Valerie and MSRA are working with Clive Cussler’s
NUMA team in search of Northwest Flight 2501, a DC-4 that
crashed into Lake Michigan in 1950.