Marcus Harris and Sean Hagerty served together in the United States Navy. After retirement, their paths crossed once again in northwestern Ohio near the site of the Battle of Lake Erie, which made Oliver Hazard Perry famous. During underwater salvage operations a few days before a commemorative event and re-enactment, the Navy buddies retrieved cannonballs from the 1813 battle that had been uncovered from the silt following a severe late-summer storm the week before. The morning of the commemoration, September 10, 2017, dawned clear and calm – much like the conditions 204 years earlier. Harris, as a re-enactor and docent, was dressed as an Ordinary Seaman from 1813, stacking 204 cannonballs into a four-sided pyramid on the South Bass Island green near where Perry's fleet sailed north to do battle against the British. With one remaining cannonball for the apex of the pyramid, a sudden turn of events changed Marcus Harris's life forever