Legend of the Great Lakes Lobster

The lake remembers.
And so does he.

In November 1978, the wind came off Lake Michigan like a blade. Still, Frank Lorman and his 17 year old son, Kyle, stood on the rusting edge of the old marina dock in Leland, Michigan, shaking hands over a battered wooden skiff they’d bought with Frank’s severance check and Kyle’s college fund. “Better than punching a time clock,” Frank had said, grinning, his breath visible in the early winter chill. “And besides, they’re starting to show up. Cold water’s pushing ’em in.”

By they, he meant Great Lakes lobsters. No one believed it at first — not in the Great Lakes. Lobsters were supposed to be an East Coast thing. But in late ’78, commercial nets started hauling up strange crustaceans: reddish, meaty, and aggressive, thriving in the deep, cold dark near the bottom. Biologists claimed they were a mutated subspecies, likely dumped by some fool aquarium enthusiast and now breeding fast. Frank didn’t care. He saw profit. And maybe legacy.

They named the boat Red Hopes and formed the Great Lakes Lobster Company on the spot. By December they were hauling in traps loaded with snapping claws. Business was brisk. Kyle sat below deck one calm evening and scribbled out the now famous GLLC logo. His dad was very proud.

The lobster season only runs six weeks a year on the Great Lakes. Kyle handled most of the gear, while Frank barked orders and chewed cigar stubs. They learned quickly — the lobsters were mean, larger than their Atlantic cousins, and strangely coordinated, often attacking the trap cages from the inside out, trying to escape in swarms.

By the end of 1979, they had three skiffs and a modest dockside shack for boiling, packing, and shipping. Kyle was now 18, tall and quiet, his hands calloused from rope and claw. Frank still refused to wear gloves. “You don’t feel the water, you don’t respect the lake,” he’d say.

Then came 1980. That spring, the lobsters changed. They were harder to trap, more elusive. And when they were caught, they fought with unnerving violence. One morning, Kyle opened a trap and found it empty but slick with blood — not theirs, but from something the lobsters had dragged inside. Frank didn’t care. “Just hungrier,” he said. “Means they’ll fight to get caught.”

Then, on a cold September morning, Frank leaned too far overboard while resetting a new, experimental steel trap. Kyle was turned away, coiling line. He only heard the splash. And then the screams.

When he reached the side, Frank was thrashing in the water, surrounded by dozens — maybe hundreds — of red-shelled lobsters. They weren’t swimming. They crawled, scuttling up from the lakebed like an inverted rainfall of claws and mandibles. Kyle lunged for the gaff hook, but it was too late. Frank was gone in less than a minute, dragged below the surface by a writhing, living net of red.

The authorities called it a tragic accident. “Fell in, hypothermia, maybe got tangled in a line.” Kyle never knew what exactly happened to his business partner — his beloved dad — but he followed his dream, expanded the business, and never looked back.

But every year, on that same September morning, he returns to the lake, stands on the old dock with a single trap — empty, door open — and lowers it into the depths. Just in case.

Kyle’s spirit lives on in every sweatshirt and tee.
Wear the legend.