By David Fleet
dfleet@mihomepaper.com
Ortonville — At 7:10 p.m., Nov. 10, 1975, Captain Ernest McSorley radioed, ‘We are holding our own.’”
The Captain of the ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald last message to the nearby carrier Arthur M. Anderson was about 17 miles off Whitefish Point in Lake Superior during a violent storm remains etched in local history. Sometime between 7:20 and 7:30 p.m. the Edmund Fitzgerald vanished and sank in 500 feet of water. All 29 men on board were lost.
From 6-7 p.m., Nov. 12, the Brandon Township Public Library, 304 South St., will host Michigan author, Mike Fornes who will present, “The Edmund Fitzgerald: The Stories, The Song.”
“If you live in any of the Great Lake States or Ontario, the story and the song are part of our history,” said Fornes, a Mackinaw City resident, scuba diver and sailor in the Northern Michigan area.
Fornes has performed for a decade at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum’s annual bell-tolling ceremony for the lost souls of the Edmund Fitzgerald at Whitefish Point, in Lake Superior during a storm.
“The ship is in 530 feet of water and has been illegal to dive to the wreck since 2006, unless approved by the Canadian government in whose waters it lies,” he said. “The wreck is a grave.”
Successful lobbying by the victims’ families has halted diving on the ship.
Forms was a close friend to Gordon Lightfoot who wrote and sang “The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald,” passed away on May 1, 2023.
“Gordon often told me, ‘He wanted to leave a clean campsite,’ when he died,” said Fornes, in regards to Lightfoot’s battle with alcoholism. “Later in life he stopped drinking and I congratulated him on a good relationship with his children. He was always nice to me, and knew I played his music.”
Fornes’s discusses his interaction with surviving family members of the lost crewmen, generating many first-hand accounts of the tragedy and of how the iconic song was written.
Fornes has covered the Mackinac Bridge for more than 20 years for several media outlets in Northern Michigan, including radio and television stations and the Cheboygan Daily Tribune.
The event is free and open to the public. visit Brandon Township Public Library’s
website at https://www.brandonlibrary.org or call 248-627-1460.