A 2017 Oxford High School graduate used her singing voice to pay homage to all those who perished more than a century ago in what is considered to be the worst maritime disaster in Great Lakes history.

Paige Elizabeth Parent is the star of a new music video in which she performs “Come to the Light, the Storm of 1913,” a song written by Price Smith, a Port Huron native.

The video made its debut at the Port Huron Museum in December.

The song and video are about the Great Storm of 1913, nicknamed the White Hurricane and the Big Blow. The destructive storm hit in November of that year, producing fierce wind gusts of up to 90 miles per hour, monster 35-foot waves and intense snow squalls.

An estimated 260 to 300 people died as a result of the violent storm. Twelve ships went down with all hands. Eight of them sank on Lake Huron, two were claimed by Lake Superior’s icy waters and one each went down in Michigan and Erie. Nineteen other ships on the Great Lakes were stranded or washed ashore.

The loss in ships amounted to approximately $5 million at the time. In today’s dollars, that’s the equivalent of $100 million or more.

Smith, a classically-trained pianist and 1982 graduate of Port Huron High School, grew up on Lake Huron. He heard stories about the Great Storm of 1913 from his grandparents and has personally experienced the raw power of the lake.

“I’ve been caught in storms on the lake,” Smith said. “It’s a real foreboding, vicious, violent place that people take for granted sometimes.”

He wrote “Come to the Light, the Storm of 1913” to help educate the public about the maritime disaster, bring attention to Port Huron’s history and museum, and honor the sacrifices made by merchant mariners.

“There’s been hundreds of (merchant mariners) lost out there and people don’t seem to pay much attention to it,” Smith said.

Smith also wanted to a provide a platform to help promote Parent’s “wonderful” alto singing voice. “If the video draws awareness to her voice and her potential, maybe there will be some future for her with singing,” he said.

In the video, Parent is shown singing atop the Fort Gratiot Lighthouse in Port Huron as if she’s calling out to the ships and sailors enduring the powerful storm.

Built in 1829, the structure is Michigan’s oldest lighthouse and the second oldest on the Great Lakes. “It’s the grandfather of all of them,” Smith said.

The Fort Gratiot Lighthouse was originally 65 feet high, but then in the 1860s, it was extended to its present height of 82 feet, according to the Port Huron Museum.

Parent was quite pleased with how the video turned out.

“I was amazed,” Parent said. “I got to see it with everyone else when it came out. It was beautiful.”

Prior to performing the song, Parent admitted she knew nothing about this dark chapter in Great Lakes history.

“It was definitely an educational experience,” she said.

Her main goal is for the song and video to honor the memory of all the people “taken by the storm” and expose current and future generations to this tragedy to help ensure it is never forgotten.

“I just hope that it touches a bunch of people,” Parent said.

Since its Dec. 19 posting on YouTube, the video has received almost 2,800 views.

Smith said there are a variety of other websites where it can be streamed and downloaded.

“We plastered it everywhere . . . Twenty years from now, (it’s) still going to be out there,” he said.

Parent’s passion for singing started long before this video was filmed.

As a sixth-grader, she won the first-ever Oxford’s Got Talent competition in 2011. Competing against 19 other acts, she was voted number one by a 550-member audience and a panel of three judges.

Parent is hoping someone will take notice of her talent and that will translate into a music career. She’s planning to release an extended play (EP) record this year, containing four pop songs she wrote.

“I’d love to (someday) perform at huge stadiums and places like that,” she said. “I’d love to be as big as (singers) Adele and Billie Eilish. If that happens, that will be amazing.”

But she isn’t putting all of her eggs in that basket. She’s attending Grand Valley State University where she’s studying to be a special education teacher. She wants to work with elementary students who are cognitively impaired.

She was inspired to do so by her mother, Janine DeVries, a special education teacher at Clear Lake Elementary who’s been with the district since 1997. Parent did some volunteer work in a Clear Lake classroom for students with cognitive impairment.

“I just kind of fell in love with the profession and the students, especially,” Parent said.