Failing Up

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Timothy Mahar Season 5 Episode 260

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on November 10th, 1975.  Twenty-nine  brave souls perished that day in the cold waters of Lake Superior.  Later a folk rock ballad was written, composed and performed by Canadian singer-song writer Gordon Lightfoot to memorialize the crew on board the Edmund Fitzgerald that perished that evening around 7:15pm. 

The song was recorded in December of 1975 and released in August of 1976. It was a song that you did not talk through or dance to.  Instead, you became engulfed with it as the music and lyrics transformed you.  I was a senior in high school and it still give me chills, as it keeps the memory those twenty-nine souls alive. In this episode I read the song and remember those 29 sailors.  "Superior, they said, never gives up her dead. When the gales of November come early". Gordon Lightfoot

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