It has been over half a century since the most mysterious tragedy in the history of the Great Lakes took the lives of 29 sailors and condemned their ship, the Edmund Fitzgerald, to the bottom of Lake Superior in 1975. Though the Fitzgerald bore the name of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on her stern, Toledo could rightly claim her as our own. Thirteen of the 29 crew members were Ohioans. Six were from Lucas and Wood Counties and one was from Fremont. 

Twenty-nine families lost a loved one when the Fitzgerald succumbed to a violent storm without so much as an SOS call for help. Not many men who once served aboard the Fitz are still alive, and there may be only one who was both a crew member and lost a relative in the sinking. Thomas Walton, the retired Editor of the Toledo Blade, served as a porter aboard the Fitzgerald in his late teens. When the ship sank on November 10, 1975, one of the 29 men lost was his uncle. 

Mr. Walton will share his recollections of the mighty Fitz, the men who sailed on her, and the various theories of what led to her demise after just 18 years of service on the Great Lakes.