From Lake Superior to Miller Park

November 10, 1975. I don’t have a clue what I was doing that day. I bet in looking back, not a lot of people remember, expect for the families of 29 men who lost their lives that day. I bet that for most people, the events of that day only became known through a song written a year later.

If you haven’t guessed, Sunday was the 38^th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Now that I told you that, you can recall everything else about that fateful night on Lake Superior. But I discovered something new the other night, new for me anyway.

Do you know who the iron ore freighter was named after? Ok, besides Mr. Edmund Fitzgerald.

The man Edmund Fitzgerald had been a business and civic leader in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for more than 50 years. He had been president of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co., which had built the 720-foot ship. When it came time for the board of trustees to vote on naming the freighter, someone made sure that Mr. Fitzgerald was out of the room. They knew that he didn’t want the boat named after him, but afterwards he admitted that it was one of his proudest moments. The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald was one of his worst moments.

He died in 1986 at the age of 90.

His son, Edmund B. Fitzgerald should be well-known among baseball fans as he was instrumental in bringing the Brewers to Milwaukee. I was quite disappointed that my husband didn’t know that, but he recovered by telling me that the Brewers had originally been the Seattle Pilots.

Edmund B. Fitzgerald passed away this August. I totally missed that. How sad when someone dies and we don’t hear about it.

I could go on. I find all these little known facts fascinating. I have another story about someone who just passed but I will wait until Thursday. In the meantime, what does the B in Ed’s name stand for?

From a freighter on Lake Superior to the current home of the Milwaukee Brewers. 

I get around, don't I?  

Memories of Hot Summer Nights

As I write this, it appears from my internet sources, that the Texas Rangers are leading the St Louis Cardinals three games to two in the World Series. There was a time when I kept up on such things. Especially in 1982 when the Milwaukee Brewers played in the World Series. I was in college at UW-La Crosse and the campus was in quite a frenzy.

Way before that though, there was a time when I was a kid and on hot summer nights we would listen to Brewers baseball on the radio.

On sticky August nights, with only one twelve inch round metal fan to cool the whole house, my parents wouldn’t turn on any lights, except for the single bulb above the kitchen sink. We didn’t own a blender, but Dad would dump milk, ice cream and Nestle’s Quik into one of mom’s white mixing bowls and whip it together with the hand-held electric mixer. With Bob Uecker and Merle Harmon announcing the play by play in the background, my dad would pour the milkshake into tall glasses that had a picture of a woman water-skiing on the side. The glasses had to be from the 1950’s because the woman wore one of those bathing suits with the pointy bra and long legs. Scary how vividly I can picture that in my head.

I think Mom still has those drinking glasses. I didn’t think to snap a photo of them, so here is my dad instead, circa 1977.