Family remembers man killed in shipwreck
The haunting lyrics and mournful melody of a ballad that hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts in the fall of 1976 continues to tell the tale of a 45-year-old tragedy that involved a Butler County native.
George Holl, who was born and raised in the Marwood neighborhood of Winfield Township, had planned to retire in September 1975 as the chief engineer on the lake freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald, but decided to wait until January, so he could retire alongside his captain and friend, Ernest McSorley.
That decision would cost Holl, 60, his life.
Holl and 28 other crew members succumbed to the icy water of Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975, when the 728-foot Fitzgerald sank 17 miles from Whitefish Point, Mich., in an epic storm as it hauled 26,000 tons of iron ore from Superior, Wisc., to Detroit.
The sinking would have been all but forgotten by those not in mourning for the crew of the ship had singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot not seen an article in Newsweek magazine about the event.
Lightfoot has said over the years that “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” represents his finest work.
“In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the maritime sailors' cathedral.
The church bell chimed 'til it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
While the cause of the sinking is not known, Holl's nephew, David Holl of Butler Township, has a theory.“They said maybe the hatches came open and water came in,” Holl said. “Maybe the cold water hit the boiler and there was an explosion.”The impressive Edmund Fitzgerald, which was the largest ship to work the Great Lakes when she was launched in 1958, was found by the Navy one year after she sank to a depth of 530 feet in Canadian water. She was in two pieces.The ship had encountered a massive storm that produced hurricane-force winds and 35-foot waves.McSorley radioed the captain of the SS Arthur M. Anderson, which was about 10 miles behind, to report a bad list, loss of radar capability and heavy seas over the deck.Although McSorley reported the storm as “one of the worst seas I've ever been in,” he did not send a distress signal.McSorley's last radio message to the Anderson, at 7:10 p.m. was, “We're holding our own.”The captain of the Anderson saw the Fitzgerald's lights go out, and no further communications were heard from the freighter.David Holl recalled his family receiving a call from his uncle, Wilmer Holl, who lived near George Holl in Ohio, where George resided during the shipping season.He came home to Marwood during the winter, when it was too icy to haul the ore pellets on the Great Lakes, and stayed with his brother, Lou, who had bought the family farmhouse that was built by the Holls in 1898.“(Wilmer) called my family and said, 'The Fitzgerald is in trouble,'” recalled David Holl, who was 19 years old at the time. “That was the night of the storm.”The worried Holl brothers talked back and forth on the phone that night, and eventually learned rescue crews had found only a few empty life jackets from the Fitzgerald.“Then we got the notice that it went down and there were no survivors,” Holl said.Perhaps hardest hit of all the family members was Lou Holl, who had gotten into an argument with George before the latter left for Ohio and the upcoming shipping season.Lou, who suffered from health issues, told others in the family he would never see George again, as Lou figured he would succumb to his issues before the next winter when George was to return as a retired man and farm the land with his brother.“He was right, but George actually got killed,” Holl said.The family traveled to the U.S. Naval Armory at Bayview Park in Toledo for the official memorial service for the 29 men lost on the Edmund Fitzgerald.He recalls the wreath that was tossed into the cold water and the bell that rang 29 times.“It was a devastation,” Holl said. “There was nothing you could do about it.”He said while the bell was retrieved from the Fitzgerald and engraved with the names of the 29 men, the families agreed that the crew should remain in its watery grave.“That is the perfect resting place for them,” Holl said. “They were all good friends, those guys on the boat.”Holl hopes to visit the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point, now that he is retired.“I want to see that bell,” Holl said. “They also have the bow and anchor.”He agrees that Lightfoot's song has kept the men of the Fitzgerald alive in song through the years.Holl owns a copy of the record and is always glad to hear it when it comes on the radio.“But it was family for us,” he said.Richard and Sandy Lang bought the Holl homestead from Lou Holl in 1978 and lived there for 41 years before selling it to their son and daughter-in-law in June.
Richard's father and older brother knew George because the Langs leased farmland from the Holls, so they were aware they were buying the family home of the Edmund Fitzgerald's chief engineer.“It was interesting,” Sandy Lang said. “We were pretty young then and we didn't know him, but we knew of the ship going down.”The couple traveled to Mackinaw, Mich., on vacation one year, and Sandy noticed Whitefish Point was just a little more than one hour to the north near the Canadian border.“I said, 'We've got to go up there and see the museum,'” she said.The couple was moved by their visit to the museum, which ended with a presentation on the Edmund Fitzgerald that included the doleful strains sung by Lightfoot.“It tore me up,” Sandy said.Richard agreed.“When you came out of there, you were crying,” he said.Richard said that while he was outside the museum, he struck up a conversation with a woman who lives on Whitefish Point and remembered the storm that took down the sturdy freighter.“She said that night, the waves were seven stories high,” he recalled. “And she said, 'I have never seen the lake that bad.'”Richard said he thought of George Holl often while living in his family home.Because one of the lost was a Winfield Township native, the tragedy of the Edmund Fitzgerald is more than just a historical event to older residents.It humanized the late George Holl.“My Dad said when George would be home, he used to swear like a sailor,” Richard said with a chuckle.
