The REAL Edmund Fitzgerald.... probably did not even see it coming...

Edmund Fitzgerald... the boat

Edmund Fitzgerald, the guy.
And Mrs. Fitzgerald.
This poor bastard looks like he is having a really great day... "WOW! They are naming a ship after me??? COOL! AWESOME!"

On the way home from dropping of Spencer to Simply Science Camp today I was listening to Sirius Satellite radio in the van, you know the brand new van that we love but that we have to sell very soon to pay for legal fees? That van. "Whole again..." that's a good one. Anyway...

OF course I was listening to the 70's channel as always and on came this emblematic song of the 1970's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." It was huge in Michigan, and I grew up in Michigan,so of course I listened to all 19 minutes of it....but it got me thinking that get this... that guy Edmund Fitzgerald, whomever he was, probably thought the day they named a ship for him WOW!!! SUPER!!!! That is probably a REALLY great day for him you know? Little did he know that one day it would sink, and then Gordon Lightfoot would write a pretty kooky song about it, a song so very long that people would end up just making fun of it.

Captain Dou***bag and his lame anthem

Let's face it, its not exactly fun to dance to.... I mean, the first 200 times you hear it, it is moving and sad. At the 201st playing of it, it gets old.

Here is the story of the ship. set to the song...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iquCHSkmUek

So it got me wondering just who this Edmund Fitzgerald guy really was. SO I looked on Wikipedia, because you KNOW it is ALWAYS correct....

On February 1, 1957, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin contracted Great Lakes Engineering Works (GLEW), of River Rouge, Michigan, to design and build an ore bulk carrier laker for Northwestern. The contract contained the stipulation that the boat be the largest on the Great Lakes. GLEW laid the keel on August 7 of that year, and some time between then and her christening and launch on June 8, 1958, Northwestern announced their decision to name the boat for their President and Chairman of the Board, Edmund Fitzgerald, whose own father had himself been a lake captain.^[2][3]

Over 15,000 people attended the Fitzgerald's launch. The event was troublesome. When Mrs. Edmund Fitzgerald went to christen the boat by smashing a champagne bottle over the bow, it took her three swings to break the bottle. The launch was delayed 36 minutes while the shipyard crew struggled to release the keel blocks. Upon launching sideways into the water, the boat crashed violently into a dock.^[4]

I think the saddest part of all was that this wreck WAS a REALLLY sad event, and a lot of people died that day, but the song is so very crappy that it minimizes the event... eclipses it.

This is an article about the real Edmund Fitzgerald and how the sipwreck overshadowed his life.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=369506

Anyway I found out that old Edmund was an insurance dude. Now I don't feel as bad for him. Just for the men on that ship who died, and their families, who will be forever immortalized by Gordon Lightfoot. Now that is the real tragedy, in my opinion.