50 years later, the mystery of the Edmund Fitzgerald still haunts the children of its lost crew

TWO HARBORS, MINN. – Nolan Church joined the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald as a porter late in life — a new career at age 50 after he was laid off from mining-related work in Silver Bay. After long stints on the massive taconite-carrying laker sailing mostly from Silver Bay to Toledo, Ohio, Church loved to spoil his children and tell stories that made them roar with laughter. They sometimes worried about him on the vast waters of the Great Lakes, his three daughters said recently. But when they would ask him if it was scary out there, he reassured them: “Not on the Ed,” came his steadfast response, according to daughter Bonnie Kellerman. Church treated his family to shopping and an early dinner at Duluth’s Chinese Lantern before heading out on what was going to be his last trip of the season on Nov. 9, 1975. The next evening, the 55-year-old father of five and 28 other crew members disappeared with their trusted ship in one of the most legendary wrecks on the Great Lakes. Their bodies were never recovered. Though the ship sank in Canadian waters close to Michigan, its mythic status looms large in Minnesota. On every anniversary, the decommissioned beacon at Split Rock Lighthouse north of Two Harbors is lit in honor of the lost men. Church was one of two Minnesotans who perished on the ship, along with seven men from northwest Wisconsin. “There hasn’t been another casualty like it since the Fitzgerald sank,” said David Schauer of the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center. “Nothing to the extreme of losing a laker of that size with all hands. “This time of year when the gales of November kick up, it’s almost impossible not to think of the men on the Fitz.”