[charlene]

Well, when the ship goes down, Ruth Hudson does not know that her son's girlfriend is pregnant. All she knows is she's lost the one person in the world she loves the most, and he's gone. And she thinks she's kind of lost everything. And then... she learns six months later that she's going to be a grandmother quite unexpectedly. And she and Heather became very close. They shopped together. And Heather, of course, grew up. She had four children herself. One of them, the oldest is Austin, who looks just like Bruce Hudson, Aunt Ruth's lost son, of course. So guess what? Aunt Ruth played favorites and Austin was her favorite. So it's clearly a bittersweet story, but it's amazing the stories that we found by talking to these people. They were not just 29 a number. They had lives and they had futures they were looking forward to.

TS: Was there anybody that was supposed to be on board that didn't go that day?

JB: Yes, the chef. The main cook was supposed to be on board that day, but he had an ulcer. He was a pretty young guy in his late 20s.But he had an ulcer and he was off the ships. They brought back Bob Rafferty, who was 63 years old, a legendary cook on the Great Lakes and well known by this crew. So they were very happy to have Bob back on board. And of course, He sends a postcard to his family saying, I should be home out of Toledo by November. 9th or 10th, but things can always change. And that's his last postcard.

TS: Wow.

JB: I'll add one more quick story.

TS: Sure.

JB: Eddie Benden was 47 years old. He was the first assistant chief engineer, high-ranking, in the engine room. He and his wife, Helen, have been married for 25 years, no kids. And their anniversary is coming up. And he's about to retire at the end of this trip as well. She's waiting for him in three days in Toledo for the ship to land. On Saturday, November 8th, for reasons we don't know, he went to a jewelry store in Duluth right next to Superior, Wisconsin, to buy her a two-carat 25th anniversary wedding ring. And he, instead of tucking this away, Tina, in his duffel bag to take the trip home himself, in three days she's going to be there on the dock. They live near Toledo. He gives it to a friend of his and asks him to mail it to his wife, gives the address, for reasons only he knows

And sure enough, of course, the ship goes down. And about four days after that, she receives in the mail her 25th anniversary diamond ring. And she wears that for the rest of her life, and she never remarried. So these are the kind of stories we found in the process. And by all accounts, Eddie Benden was a great guy, according to his old crewman, Patrick Devine. So we got those stories.

TS: Were the families compensated by the shipping companies or anybody?

JB: Yeah, the families were compensated as little as the company could get away with. And although Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance owned the ship, it was operated by Ogilvy Norton out of Cleveland. They leased it, hired the crew, bought the food, all this. And basically the families got whatever their lawyer could get from the companies. There's no standard settlement. So it ended up being, in most cases, like a year's salary, which you've got four or five kids at home in their teens and you lost your main breadwinner. That's not nearly enough, of course. So that's pretty brutal. Insurance often did not have to pay because it's an act of God, but they got by in very little.

And as one of the women said, Heidi Wilhelm, she's a 12-year-old girl at the time, she said, 'We did what our dads and husbands and cousins and uncles would do. We stuck together and we got through it all together.' And they did.

TS: The book is "The Gales of November, The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald." John U. Bacon, thank you so much for joining us today.

JB: Tina, thank you.