Split Rock Lighthouse lights its beacon to honor the Edmund Fitzgerald and its crew
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It’s a simple ceremony to mark a tragic event.
Each November, on the anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, a crowd gathers at Split Rock Lighthouse on the North Shore. The names of each of the 29 crew members lost in the wreck are read aloud. And a bell is tolled in their memory.
The bell is rung a 30th time to honor those who have died in the thousands of other Great Lakes shipwrecks over the decades.
And then the lighthouse beacon is lit, shining out on the vastness of frigid Lake Superior.
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Monday’s ceremony — the 40th annual beacon-lighting, and the 50th anniversary of the sinking — drew a crowd of more than 2,000 people.
Former lighthouse site manager Lee Radzak came up with the idea for the event back in 1985, the 10th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Back then, it was one man’s gesture to remember the tragedy.
“I’ve got the keys to this lighthouse,” he remembers thinking, and “this lighthouse is so closely tied to the history of the Fitzgerald.”
The ship passed by the lighthouse after it departed from Superior, Wis., on Nov. 9, 1975, loaded with 26,000 tons of iron ore pellets, bound for Detroit. The next day, Nov. 10, it sank in a violent storm on eastern Lake Superior.
“It’s a small thing to do, but I figured I could turn the light on,” Radzak recalled of that first Nov. 10 remembrance at Split Rock. “I went up and cranked up the weights the old-fashioned way, as it’s still done. And I lit the beacon for a couple hours. And it just really felt good to be up there.”
That first year was just him, alone, on the lighthouse perched high on a rock cliff above Lake Superior. But a few people saw the light, and asked him to do it the following year.
“And within a few years, it just kept growing kind of naturally. And we just figured we have to keep doing it. It’s just such an appropriate thing to do,” said Radzak.
This year’s milestone gathering drew people from far and wide. It sold out weeks ahead of time, showing how deeply connected people of the region are to the massive lake — beautiful and forbidding — and the ships that ply its waters.
They packed a courtyard in front of the lighthouse and lined the shoreline at the bottom of the rock cliffs to see the lighthouse lit from afar.
Susan Munson was there with her husband from Starbuck, Minn. She grew up not far from Split Rock. Her dad worked for what was then Erie Mining farther up the North Shore, where ships would load with huge cargos of iron ore pellets to transport to steel mills on the lower Great Lakes. She was 11 when the Fitzgerald sank.
“And I remember the storm because I’m from maybe 30 miles north of here, and from a mining company family. We saw ore boats every day. It hit very close to home,” she said.
Munson and her husband wore cards around their necks that read “In Memory of Robert Rafferty.” He was a cook who died on the Fitz. They connected with his cousin on a Great Lakes Facebook page.
“All the people should be remembered,” said Munson. “The ship is kind of the focus of things, but the people should really be remembered.”
Mark Nagel of St. Cloud made plans months ago to attend the event. He remembers learning about the tragedy in ninth grade.
“And it just seemed like something that was not possible,” Nagel said. “The Fitzgerald story is haunting. And it’s nice to be here to pay homage to those 29 souls.”
Their memories live on at the annual Split Rock ceremony, and others like it around the Great Lakes — both with people who remember the tragedy from their childhoods, and with a new generation who have become invested in the history of the wreck.
“I’ve always been a nerd, especially with ships and shipwrecks,” Luke Schmieg, 19, of Glencoe, Minn., who persuaded his family to attend the memorial.
“I’m excited to be here,” Schmieg said. “It’s cold, but I don’t care.”
