TRAVERSE CITY — On a lovely summer afternoon in 2023, John Heiam and Lois Goldstein were driving home after spending the day in a tandem canoe picking up trash on the Pine River when Heiam’s car suddenly crossed the centerline on East Hammond Road in East Bay Township and crashed head-on into a truck carrying a father and his son.

Heiam, 78, and Goldstein, 75, who had been married for 45 years and were widely revered as stewards of the woods and waters in Northern Michigan, died in the fiery crash.

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