Edmund Fitzgerald’s Wreckage Radio Project Helps Friends Find Meaning

It’s amazing how the opportunity to retell a tragic story can give friends in recovery a new sense of purpose.

What began in May 2023 with retired friends smoking cigars and reciting their favorite Gordon Lightfoot songs shortly after the singer’s death later developed into a gripping radio play that dramatically retells the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975.

Lightfoot immortalized “Fitz” in a hit from 1976. Sunday marks the 49th anniversary of the shipwreck.

The radio project, said narrator and retired journalist Dave Nimmer, gave a group of friends in their 70s and 80s something good, meaningful and real.

“We’re a bunch of recovering alcoholics who want to get somewhere,” said Nimmer, whose voice once invited viewers into his stories on WCCO News. “Yes, I want to go somewhere. I want to be happy. So you do what you do. And I tell stories.”

According to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald began its final voyage on Lake Superior at approximately 2:30 p.m. on November 9, 1975 from Superior, Wisconsin, under the command of Captain Ernest M. McSorley. They were later joined by the Arthur M. Anderson, captained by Bernie Cooper, from Two Harbors, Minn. The ships that were in radio contact were between 10 and 15 miles apart.

On November 10, weather conditions continued to deteriorate with high winds and rough waters. During the day, McSorley radioed reports of damage to the Fitzgerald and said her ballast tanks were taking on water. The two ships had their last radio contact at 7:10 p.m. on November 10th. At 7:15 a.m. the Fitzgerald’s radar signal disappeared. All 29 crew members were lost.

The radio drama project actually began 42 years ago when Hal Barnes wrote a screenplay about the Fitz based on a National Transportation Safety Board report, including transmissions between the doomed ship and the Anderson. He was living in Duluth at the time and was fascinated by shipwrecks.