RIP Gordon Lightfoot 1938-2023
(media.greatawakening.win)
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The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Brings me to tears ("The church bell chimed, and it rang 29 times, for each man..."). R.I.P.
I went to Michigan Tech and have many cousins who live in the Keewenaw. There were a lot of students there in 1983-1988 whose family were involved in Great Lakes shipping. Many of them had family or friends impacted by this disaster. On one road trip in November 1986 to visit my girlfriend at Lake Superior State in the Soo, a bunch of us drove to Paradise and from there up to Whitefish Point. We got shitty drunk on the beach just 17 miles away from the wreck. If the ship had made the lee of Whitefish Point it would have been safe.
Many years later the wife and I took the kids to a family reunion in Copper Harbor. We drove all around the UP following the shoreline. One stop was at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point where the bell from the ship is displayed. The kids missed the significance but I was touched. That bell had sat 550 feet down on the bottom of the Lake for 20 years. A replica of the bell with the 29 names engraved on it was returned to the icy depths to stand guard over the last resting place of these brave sailors.
Sorry for the tangent. Since I was 10 years old, the wreck and Lightfoots haunting ode have always moved my soul.
Thanks for the story, fren. I think all of us in Michigan were touched by the wreck. In a different way, it was a very similar feeling to the Velsicol/PBB cow feed tragedy that took place the year before in St. Louis MI and spread to the whole of the state; another very sad event (the clean up continues to this very day). I was six when the freighter sank, and our elementary school music teacher would revisit the tragedy on or very near the anniversary every year, playing the song and educating us on what happened that day.
I've added the Shipwreck Museum to our vacation bucket list, so thank you for mentioning that as well.