LeilaniOtter
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Tonight at 8:10 P.M., downtown Cleveland churches will ring their bells 29 times for the lives taken in the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, on a cold autumn night in Lake Superior during a storm, November 10, 1975. The sinking is famously memorialized in Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 ballad, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," and led to new safety regulations for Great Lakes shipping.
I remember when we heard about what happened, we couldn't believe it. The Edmund Fitzgerald was on its way to Detroit when it ran into freak gales that whipped up the lake and sank her. A lot of the victims were local to the Great Lakes, from Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. So it was like all the states surrounding those lakes lost someone dear to them - here in Northeast Ohio, we lost seven people.
Edward F. Bindon (47) from Fairport Harbor, Bruce L. Hudson (22) from North Olmsted, John H. McCarthy (62) from Bay Village, Karl A. Peckol (20) and Paul M. Riippa (22) from Ashtabula, James A. Pratt (44) from Lakewood, and Mark A. Thomas (21) from Richmond Heights.
50 years on, and we still have so many questions. Why? A lot of people question the captain's decision to head North and try to escape the storm - yet it plunged them headlong into it. Had the instruments and radar stopped working that would have told them where to head? November on Lake Superior can be gentle as a lamb or as ferocious as a lion. Everyone knew it. So why take the chance at all, and wait for calmer, steadier waters before embarking? Were the 26,116 long tons of taconite iron ore pellets that important? We'll probably never know. There has been talk of trying to raise the vessel somehow, to explore her and maybe give her a proper decommission.
But I say here and now, let her rest.
I remember when we heard about what happened, we couldn't believe it. The Edmund Fitzgerald was on its way to Detroit when it ran into freak gales that whipped up the lake and sank her. A lot of the victims were local to the Great Lakes, from Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. So it was like all the states surrounding those lakes lost someone dear to them - here in Northeast Ohio, we lost seven people.
Edward F. Bindon (47) from Fairport Harbor, Bruce L. Hudson (22) from North Olmsted, John H. McCarthy (62) from Bay Village, Karl A. Peckol (20) and Paul M. Riippa (22) from Ashtabula, James A. Pratt (44) from Lakewood, and Mark A. Thomas (21) from Richmond Heights.
50 years on, and we still have so many questions. Why? A lot of people question the captain's decision to head North and try to escape the storm - yet it plunged them headlong into it. Had the instruments and radar stopped working that would have told them where to head? November on Lake Superior can be gentle as a lamb or as ferocious as a lion. Everyone knew it. So why take the chance at all, and wait for calmer, steadier waters before embarking? Were the 26,116 long tons of taconite iron ore pellets that important? We'll probably never know. There has been talk of trying to raise the vessel somehow, to explore her and maybe give her a proper decommission.
But I say here and now, let her rest.