"He wrote about the respect for the men." ![]() "I got a good feeling out of it," she said. She listened to it several times and her thoughts changed completely. "I said, 'How can there be a song?' Nobody knows what happened." Rozman remembers when she first heard about the song, released less than a year after she lost her father. if they're spelling the name wrong, I've got to get into this.' So I was remembering back to a song, an Irish dirge I'd heard at 3 years old." It's Edmund - they used an O instead of a U, and I said, 'That's it. "But what really spurred me on it was that they were spelling the name wrong. ![]() "I said, 'Gosh, this is short shrift for such a monumental event,' " Lightfoot said. In an interview with NPR in February, Lightfoot retold the story behind "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." He heard the initial news stories about the sinking, then forgot all about the ship and her crew until, about two weeks later, he picked up a copy of Newsweek magazine.Īn article about the Edmund Fitzgerald began, "According to a legend of the Chippewa Tribe, the lake they once called Gitche Gumme 'never gives up her dead.' " The history and beauty of a spot with the oldest working lighthouse on the shores of Lake Superior. Ley believes that is part of what continues to draws people to the shipwreck museum and the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald. To this day, no one is exactly sure why the Edmund Fitzgerald sank. Two 700-foot-long ships loaded with cargo, setting out into marginal weather, intending to avoid the worst of it. There certainly are similarities in the stories. A reader posted this reaction on one of the news stories: "The loss of the El Faro and 33 lives should be treated as the Edmund Fitzgerald of our times." It wasn't just family members who made connections in their minds between the two ships. "I said a couple of prayers for the family members right away," Rozman said Friday. Her father, Ransom Cundy, was a watchman on the Fitzgerald. She lives in Gwinn, a small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. But when the El Faro disappeared in the waves of a hurricane, some immediately heard echoes of another ship with the initials E.F.Ĭheryl Rozman, 67, was one of them. Until this October, no one would have thought to link the two. In 1975, the same year the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, a boat that eventually would be known as the El Faro was built. "We're going to have a live feed to TVs in three other buildings," said Sean Ley, development officer for the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society. Everything from a concert featuring a Gordon Lightfoot tribute band Monday night to a solemn maritime ritual, the Call to Last Watch, at the museum Tuesday.Ī bell recovered from the ship 20 years after it sank will be rung 30 times - once for each of the 29 Fitzgerald crew members, and once for all the other sailors who have lost their lives on the Great Lakes. And in the next few days, there will be memorial events stretching from Minnesota to Michigan and Ohio. 2 on the Billboard charts the following year, the legend has indeed lived on.Ī shipwreck museum in a tiny Upper Michigan town attracted about 80,000 visitors this year. In no small part because of the song that rose to No. All 29 crew members, including two from Florida, went down with the ship. Tuesday will mark the 40th anniversary of the November day when skies turned gloomy and the Big Fitz, a 729-foot ship loaded with 26,000 tons of ore pellets, sank 530 feet to the icy depths of Lake Superior. The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead Of the big lake they call "Gitche Gumme." The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down Mixed in with all the pop and disco, here was Lightfoot, a Canadian folk rock artist, singing what sounded like an old dirge about a real captain, his crew and how a shipwreck would forever keep them together. 1 song was "Love Will Keep Us Together," by Captain & Tennille. 1 song in 1976, but an apt description of the pop music of the day. ![]() Or to be more precise, many remember the 1970s, turning on the radio and hearing Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."Īt the time, the airways were full of "Silly Love Songs" - not only the title of Wings' No. Many Americans of a certain age - OK, my age - remember the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
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