Community Gathers For Edmund Fitzgerald’s 50th Anniversary

TWO HARBORS (WJON News) -- An estimated 22-hundred people -- the largest number ever -- turned out Monday afternoon at Split Rock Lighthouse on Minnesota's North Shore to mark 50 years since the Edmund Fitzgerald sank on Lake Superior in a November gale, taking all 29 crew members to their deaths:

Lumberg-Kupczyk says they visited the Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial in Washburn, Wisconsin and attended events in Duluth and Superior before coming to Split Rock:

"It's been just an honor, this last four days, what we've gone and seen and done  --  and how kind people are and how far they've driven to be here.  You know, we just came around the lake."

Lumberg-Kupczyk says like her uncle, her father was a sailor --  and was out on the Great Lakes the night the Fitzgerald went down.

Lee Radzak, historic site manager at Split Rock from 1982 to 2019, began the beacon-lighting tradition.  Radzak says on a Sunday afternoon  in 1985, the 10th anniversary of the Fitzgerald sinking...

"I was coming back from Silver Bay, heard Gordon Lightfoot's song on the radio, which kind of prompted me to think a little bit more about it:  I've got the keys to this lighthouse.  This lighthouse is so closely tied to the history of the Fitzgerald and the shipping that went by here.  The Fitzgerald went by here the night before, on November 9th (1975). It's a small thing to do, but I figured I could turn the light on.  I went up and cranked up the weights the old-fashioned way, as it's still done, and lit the beacon for a couple hours.  And it just really felt good to be up there by myself, and to even get out on the lantern deck and stand there and feel what it was like on November 10th (1975)."

Radzak says neighbors going by on Highway 61 wondered why the beacon was on, asked about doing it again, and the annual observance grew naturally from there.

Split Rock Lighthouse Historic Site Manager Hayes Scriven was asked, why still so much interest in the Fitzgerald a half-century after it sank?

"I think there's a lot that we still don't know about the Fitz:  a lot of theories on why  the ship may have gone down.  I definitely think Gordon Lightfoot's song has something to play a part of it.  It keeps kinda the staying power with it."

Scriven says people also feel a connection to the big ore freighters on the Great Lakes.

32-year-old Joseph Gallahue from Cass Lake says at his job at a senior home in Bemidji, he met a resident who was a Great Lakes captain for 54 years, beginning in 1957:

"He was telling me a story that, when he was first starting out on the Great Lakes -- (that would) be right before the Edmund Fitzgerald (wreck) happened-- that he was (on) one of two of the last boats to see the Edmund Fitzgerald before it went down.  They were heading into port while the Edmund Fitzgerald was heading out."

Gallahue says his dad got him interested in classic rock, he heard "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" and did an eighth-grade school project about it:

"I played 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald' for the whole class and everyone looked at me, like, what is this kid listening to?  ...Since then, I've always kinda wanted to come here. I've never had a chance to be a part of it, and this is the 50th anniversary (and) I said I had to go."

"My dad got me into classic rock music and I heard 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.'  I loved that song; so in... one of my eighth-grade classes, I chose to do a school project on the Edmund Fitzgerald."

Norma Leas  from Inver Grove Heights says she was only 21 when the Fitzgerald sank and calls Monday's Split Rock event "amazing":

"There's a lot of love I think in this crowd.  At the same time it's still sad.  I still feel very sad, for the lives that were lost."

Liisa Norling from Savage says:

"I was in Detroit when I was 10... at the first service at Detroit, so it's full circle... I remember... being in the museum, in the (Maritime Sailors) Cathedral."

That's the church the late Gordon Lightfoot was talking about when he sang, "In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed, in the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral."  Lightfoot later in live performances replaced "musty" with "rustic" out of respect for the church.

This story is courtesy of Bill Werner.