Remembering the Edmund Fitzgerald, Nov. 10, 1975

The crew of 29 sailors died on this night in a monstrous ‘November gale’

My mom and I sitting on the shore of Lake Superior at Presque Isle State Park, in Marquette, Michigan, circa 1973–74. Photo taken by Lt Col Bernard D Claxton, USAF-Retired.

We writers have super powers

My work-in-progress pays homage to the tragedy of Nov. 10, 1975 — the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. An event that happened less the 150–200 miles to the northeast of our home in Upper Michigan.

If you did not know, we writers have many super powers. What is one of my super powers?

I have created characters who are teens in 1977 and who attend school next to an elementary school where I was a student. A school named Edmund Fitzgerald Middle School. One that never existed. But in order for my story to work, must be there or I have nothing!

K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base, aka ‘K.I. Siberia’

In 1975, my dad was a B-52 pilot in the United States Air Force. For the second time in six years, the Strategic Air Command stationed us to K.I. Sawyer AFB, 25 miles south of Marquette, Michigan.

One learns in the military a unique twist in the name exists for most everything. Airmen in the 1960s who had suffered through long winters of 200-plus inches of snow, gave K.I. Sawyer the nickname of “K.I. Siberia.”