“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call Glitche Gumee.” I wonder if Gordon Lightfoot realized just how much he was adding to that Legend as wrote that haunting song back in 1975.
Why is Fitzgerald still in people’s minds fifty years after the sinking? I suspect the song has something to do with it, but that’s only part of the story. Maybe it’s the romance of sailing, perhaps it is a continuation of the epic tale of men against all odds, of fortitude in the face of ruin.
Obsession With Ships
I have been obsessed with tales of ships and the sea since boyhood. In the mid-nineteenth century, my ancestors ran lumber schooners out of Kewanee, Wisconsin. Whatever the reason, I’ve always been drawn to ships and the sea, even if I grew up in the middle of the Midwest.
In the early 1980s, I lived in the woods north of Duluth and worked as a copywriter, turning out ads for frozen pizza and other useless stuff. In the course of the work, I came to realize I loved working in radio. A blank page has to be filled; it is tedious work. TV and film require all kinds of tech support. It is always a considerable team effort. But on the radio, all you need is a microphone and imagination. You can be the master of the radio universe.
A Radio Play
So I thought, why not write a radio play about the sinking of the Fitzgerald? After all, I had access to actual sailors I could interview and a great connection with Pat Labedie at the Canal Park Marine Museum in Duluth. I found the National Transportation Safety Board’s official reports and studied them carefully.
I learned a thousand theories about what happened to the Fitz, but wasn’t interested in solving that mystery. I wanted to write a play as if you were in the wheelhouse during the final trip.
What were the men saying and what were they feeling? It was a perfect subject for radio. It is tradition to ring the Fitz’s bell on the anniversary of the sinking, once for each of the twenty-nine men who lost their lives that night in 1975. The year Gordon Lightfoot died, the bell rang one for time to thirty in honor of the man who helped the crew slip into the realm of legend.
By Hal Barnes