Twenty-two year old Chris Parish and his dad, Francis, were on a beach on Lake Superior deciding whether or not to launch their fishing boat. The forecast was bad but nothing they hadn’t seen in their years fishing Whitefish Bay.
They had two options: make the 15-minute trip to get their nets before the storm rolled in, or risk losing them.
“If your nets get caught in a storm like that, they just get ripped to shreds,” said Chris. “Making one net like that — they were worth about $100 at that time. There was five nets, so that's five hundred bucks.”
Five hundred dollars was a good chunk of change for a small fishing operation. So Chris and his dad motored out and started pulling the nets out of the water. But within a few minutes, the sky turned black and the wind picked up. They tried heading back to shore but the waves swelled and capsized their boat.
Chris and his dad held on to the capsized hull as the storm grew around them. If they didn’t get help soon, they were going to die.
This storm had built in the southern plains before ripping its way north into Lake Superior on November 10, 1975. And Chris and his dad weren’t the only ones caught in it: just miles away, a freighter called the SS Edmund Fitzgerald began to falter.
Credits:
Producer: Ellie Katz
Host: Dan Wanschura
Editor: Morgan Springer
Music: Blue Dot Sessions, Marc Lacuesta
Additional Editing: Dan Wanschura, Michael Livingston, Ruth Abramovitz
Production Help: Bekah Wineman
Special thanks to author Jerry Dennis, who wrote about this story in his book, “The Living Great Lakes”.
Transcript:
DAN WANSCHURA, HOST: This is Points North, a podcast about the land, water and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. I’m Dan Wanschura. Chris Parish and his dad, Francis, were on a beach on Lake Superior deciding whether or not to launch their fishing boat.
CHRIS PARISH: We stood around and talked and decided if we're going to go out or not because of the bad weather coming in, but it wasn't supposed to hit until the afternoon.
WANSCHURA: It was only 8:30 in the morning. It was windy and choppy, but they’d been out in weather like this many times before in their years fishing. Chris and his dad were tribal fishermen from the Bay Mills Indian Community. The main thing they were debating was saving their nets.
PARISH: Dad and I had a gang of nets out in the lake that was halfway to Pomeroy’s Island out there. And the water there is funny. It goes up and down. There's big rocks in there. And if your nets get caught in a storm like that, they just get ripped to shreds. Making one net like that — they were worth about $100 at that time. There was five nets in it, so that's 500 bucks.
WANSCHURA: This was 1975 — $500 was a good chunk of change for a small fishing operation. Chris had worked with his dad enough to know that November on Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior could have bad weather but great fishing. And he also knew that at around 10 a.m. the weather would usually make a decision. It was now 9:30: they felt like they had a half hour window.
PARISH: And so dad says, “Well, let's just go out and grab that one gang of nets. We won't even put them in boxes or anything. We'll just pull them into the bottom of the boat and we'll straighten them out when we get to shore.” And I told him, I says, “OK, let's go.”
WANSCHURA: So they took off in their small fishing boat.
PARISH: We didn't have any trouble at all going out. We went out and we grabbed ahold of the nets, and my dad started bringing them into the boat.
WANSCHURA: Chris was in the back with the motor. And then he looked over his shoulder toward land and he saw something he hadn’t seen minutes before.
PARISH: The water was just black, and the sky was black, and you could just see the wind coming. The waves were starting to come and we call it “ripping the tops off of the waves.” The wind picked up so much, it just kind of turns them white.
WANSCHURA: Chris and his dad just decided to leave the nets and instead head for calmer waters.
PARISH: I just remember telling Dad, “Put your life jacket on.” And I tried putting mine on. I never could get it on. It stuck on my left arm.
WANSCHURA: He started motoring toward safety, but by then the storm had hit them.
PARISH: Water was just boiling, just coming right up from the bottom, all over.
WANSCHURA: Five foot waves were crashing over the bow of the boat as Chris tried to maneuver it. He lost sight of the shore with the waves swelling so high. Then a huge wave came from behind and flipped the boat. Chris and his dad were knocked into the cold, rough water. They grabbed onto the hull of the boat before the waves took it away. There was only one thought going through Chris’s mind:
PARISH: “Oh, shit.” That was about it. “We're in trouble now.”
WANSCHURA: Chris and his dad kicked their boots off as they filled with water — they didn’t want to get weighed down as they hung onto the capsized boat.
PARISH: The waves were coming so hard that a lot of times you'd get washed right off. They'd knock you right off the boat, and you had to swim back and get a hold of the boat and climb back up on there.
WANSCHURA: The water was only 50 degrees. Time stretched out as they fought against the waves trying to pry them off the boat. But after 45 minutes, they were getting tired and cold. And they were drifting toward open water away from any chance they might have of making it to safety on the nearby island.
PARISH: You know you're, you're in a situation — your brain is always working, always trying to get you through the predicament you're in.
WANSCHIRA: Chris grabbed the bow line and tied his dad to the boat then wrapped it around himself too so they could both rest. But that would only do so much. If they didn’t get help soon, they were going to die.
This storm had built in the southern plains before ripping its way north. On November 10th, 1975, it had suddenly come crashing into Lake Superior, crashing into Chris and his dad, and it was getting worse and worse.
Chris and his dad weren’t the only ones out there, either. A bunch of ships were struggling out on open water. There were waves the size of three-story houses and hurricane-force gusts. One of those ships was the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald.
But this is a story about the fate of a few fishermen who were swept up in the chaos of the lake not far away. Producer Ellie Katz takes it from here.
ELLIE KATZ, BYLINE: L. John Lufkins, another Bay Mills fisherman, was out that day too. He and his brother-in-law launched in that same little inlet Chris and his dad did, from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. And they were near that same island — Pomeroy’s Island, also known as Tahquamenon Island. John and his brother-in-law were lucky. They made it to the island without much of an issue.
Tahquamenon Island is barely an island. It’s a tiny sliver of boulders and rocks dotted with a few scrubby trees. The waves were just starting to crash over it when John and his brother-in-law pulled up. But it had a small tar paper shack where fishermen occasionally camped out. They hunkered down inside to wait out the storm.
JOHN LUFKINS: There was some oil in this old upright oil stove, so we lit that, got that going. There was some kerosene lamps. Got those all fired up.
KATZ: They started playing cribbage to pass the time.
LUFKINS: And we're sitting there, and all of a sudden the door opened up.
KATZ: A man was standing there, soaking wet.
LUFKINS: Seeing him stand there was like, “OK, how’d you get here?”
KATZ: John recognized him: it wasn’t Chris or his dad. It was another local fisherman from Bay Mills. He and his fishing partner had capsized. He swam to shore, but his partner was still in the water, hanging on to a gas can to stay afloat.
LUFKINS: So we run out and grabbed him and brought him in, and because we had the heat in there, we stripped them both down and get the chill out of them because the water was freezing.
KATZ: The four of them got settled in the shack, but John had a nagging feeling.
LUFKINS: I said, “Did everybody make it back ashore OK?”
KATZ: “Yeah,” the others said. They were pretty sure everyone had gotten back.
LUFKINS: I said, “All right, I'm gonna just walk the shore” — circle the island one more time to see if I'd see anything.
KATZ: He didn’t see anything except for a little rabbit. But just as he was closing the door behind him as he went back into the shack, the wind blew it out of his hand. He turned to grab it again. And he swore he could see something — a tiny speck of orange out in the water.
KATZ: Chris Parish and his dad, Francis, were still tied to their capsized boat, gripping the hull, getting battered by freezing waves that were only growing bigger. 45 minutes turned into an hour. An hour turned into two. Chris and his dad were praying with Lake Superior heaving around them. Two hours turned into three. Chris’s dad got colder and quieter.
PARISH: He was having a real hard time talking or praying or anything, and he kind of just laid there on the boat trying to rest as much as he could.
KATZ: The wind kept pushing them away from the island toward open water. Then something happened: a stroke of unbelievable luck. Chris still doesn't understand it. But suddenly Chris and his dad were within 50 yards of the island — close enough to swim.
PARISH: I tried talking to dad, you know, telling dad that maybe we should go in and uh—
KATZ: His dad was in no condition to swim that far.
PARISH: He wanted me to go, but I could never leave him. That just didn't even cross my mind. Told him, “We're in this together. Sink or swim, we're in this together.”
KATZ: So they kept hanging on and the island started to shrink from view again.
PARISH: I got really scared then. I thought, “Man, if we drift away from this island anymore, we're not gonna make it,” you know.
KATZ: Chris kept his eyes glued on the shore. He saw the boat — he knew people were there. And then, he saw four men come out of the shack. He recognized them, including his cousin, John Lufkins.
PARISH: I was trying to holler at him, and I couldn't holler at ‘em. They couldn't hear anything.
KATZ: Chris screamed and screamed and screamed until he was hoarse. But the waves and the wind were just a dull roar — like a train coming. His voice couldn’t cut through. He remembers what happened next a bit differently than John.
PARISH: When they went back into the building, that was probably the lowest point I had. My stomach just sank. I knew dad didn't have too much longer, because he was pretty bad then.
KATZ: He scrambled for a way to try to get their attention if they came out again. He took off his life vest that was still only half on and held it in his right hand. And then he waited.
PARISH: Probably 10, 15 minutes. A piece of tar paper blew off the roof of the shack and blew in front of the window. And I see the shack door open … and I got my knees up on the bottom of the boat, and I stood up as tall as I could and still hold on to Dad. And I had that orange life jacket — I had it up as high as I could get it, and *pause* I'm sorry.
PARISH: John came to the door to look and see what went by the window, and he seen me waving that orange jacket, that orange life jacket. I knew he seen me because he went back in so fast. And all of a sudden the door opened and all four of the guys that were in there came out. I knew somebody was coming, coming to help.
KATZ: From the shore of the island, Chris looked like a little orange dot. John just saw him once between the rising waves, but that was all he needed. He knew someone was still out there — and they needed help.
LUFKINS: So I said, “Just go get the boat ready.” So they ran down, put the motor on the boat.
KATZ: John started stripping out of his heavy, warm clothes.
LUFKINS: You looked at the water and it was like suicide to want to go, but you can't just let somebody die, you know.
KATZ: He started to think about his wife — he’d only been married about five years.
LUFKINS: Had one daughter, Heather, she was four. And Shannon, the second one — she was just brand newborn in October. So I'm like, “Well, Ronnie is young enough to find a new man. Heather will remember me. Shannon will only have pictures, you know.”
KATZ: Then he got in the boat. The men pushed him out. He’d accepted whatever was about to happen. Chris was no longer in sight, but John gunned the boat to where he remembered seeing the life vest. The waves welled up around him like walls. And when he got up onto a crest, he’d look around at landmarks to orient himself and squinted into the mountains of black water for a speck of orange.
LUFKINS: And I'm like, “Damn, I'm not making any progress.”
KATZ: He turned the boat a little and went up over another big crest. Then he saw them. And he realized: It was his cousin, Chris, and his uncle, Francis. They were still there, still alive, still hanging on to their capsized boat.
LUFKINS: It was a miracle they were still hanging onto the boat after being in the water that long.
KATZ: He yelled out to them.
LUFKINS: “Chris, I'm going to come in between you with bow the boat. Each of you grab one side of the boat and crawl in so as not to capsize me.”
PARISH: So he came over at us, and I reached up and I grabbed the side of the boat, and I pulled myself up, and I threw one leg in, and I got halfway in, and I was laying on the side of the boat, and I couldn't get in. I was stuck. That's when it hit me that I had hypothermia and I was just exhausted.
KATZ: John let go of the motor and yanked Chris in. But the wind blew them away from Francis.
PARISH: I was thankful to be there, but all I could think about was Dad. I told John, I said, “We gotta go get him, John.” The boat, by then, had blown around in another circle, so we came back at him, come at Dad again and thank God he stayed on the boat. He didn't get washed off. And I told him, I hollered at John. I says, “John, just drive your boat right up on the back of that boat — our boat,” I said, “And I'll get a hold of Dad, and I won't let him go.”
KATZ: So that’s what John did.
PARISH: All dad could do was lift his hands up like this. He just lifted ‘em up, and I got a hold of his wrists, and I got him up halfway into the boat, and I couldn't— I didn't have the strength to get him the rest of the way in the boat.
LUFKINS: I said, “Don't let him go.” I says, “I'll be right up there.” And I reached down and grab on. And I told Chris, “OK, I got him, let him go.”
PARISH: Dad slithered down to the bottom of the boat like a snake, and he had his head down underneath the seats and stuff, and his feet up in the air. We were an awful sight, I'll bet. But we were alive.
KATZ: It had been a long time since John left the island for them — close to an hour — and they were drifting with no view of land. And then John caught sight of the shore on the mainland miles away, and guessed, based on that, where the island might be. And he headed in that direction.
LUFKINS: I says, “Keep your eyes peeled for the island.” Well, you couldn't see nothing except water. You know, Chris goes, “Are we going to die, Johnny?” I wasn't bullshittin’. I didn’t risk my life and come out here to save you to die. I said, “No, we're gonna make it.”
KATZ: John kept pointing his small fishing boat toward where he thought the island was. Chris watched for land. Francis lay unresponsive. They felt the island before they saw it: the waves calmed down around their boat and they made it back to shore.
LUFKINS: God, when I got out of the boat and I hit the land, the realization of what I had done finally sunk in, you know?
KATZ: He’d saved them and survived.
LUFKINS: And my legs just totally collapsed, and I'm down on my knees, and I'm like, “Wow, this is weird.” You know, it took a while to get my composure and get back up. Just complete relief.
KATZ: The men got Chris and his dad into the heated shack. They stripped off their wet clothes, piled them with blankets and waited. Chris warmed up quickly. And an hour and a half later, Francis was talking again and sitting up. The group made fish sandwiches with some whitefish they’d managed to catch before the storm set in. They were safe. They talked about their families and the weather as the sun went down outside. The storm kept going and waves kept crashing over the island, sounding like rain on the little shack. And Chris fell asleep.
KATZ: The next morning, the six fishermen who waited out the night on tiny Tahquamenon Island managed to get a radio signal. They caught the end of a news broadcast about a freighter — the Edmund Fitzgerald — disappearing overnight. A few hours later, they made it back to shore. Their families were waiting for them. And then they learned the full story with the rest of the country. Here’s an old broadcast from NBC’s Tom Brokaw.
TOM BROKAW, NBC NEWS: A freighter carrying a crew of 29 disappeared on Lake Superior during a severe storm last night, and so far, no survivors have been found. The freighter, the Edmund Fitzgerald, was transporting iron ore when it ran into high winds and 25 foot waves. Rebecca Bell has the story.
REBECCA BELL: In the area where the Fitzgerald went down, its sister ship joined the search. But so far, all that was found was an oil slick, life jackets and an empty lifeboat. There was no sign of the 29 men aboard.
KATZ: None of those 29 men survived. The Edmund Fitzgerald was found, split in two, at the bottom of Lake Superior. It’s still unclear why the ship sank. But it linked John and Chris to that tragedy forever. It became nearly impossible for them to think about their own experience without thinking about the Edmund Fitzgerald. A few days later, the Coast Guard found the boat Chris and his dad were in floating in Lake Superior. The boat was coated in a thick black residue: probably oil from the Edmund Fitzgerald.
PARISH: Like a tar almost. And that's how far the boat floated out in the lake after we left it.
KATZ: Chris scraped some of that oil off into a jar and kept it. And then, he and his dad, Francis, and John didn’t really talk much about what happened. John didn’t even talk about it with his wife.
LUFKINS: I didn't want her to know that I made a selfish sacrifice to leave her and the kids to fend for themselves, you know. I was like, “Better if she didn't know.”
KATZ: She found out about the story and the rescue years later, after they were divorced. When the Gordon Lightfoot song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” came out in 1976, Chris and John couldn’t stand to listen to it. It was too emotional and the memory was too close.
PARISH: Now I look forward to hearing it on the radio.
KATZ: What changed? What do you like about it now?
PARISH: I guess, it was really something. We're all intertwined now, you know what I mean? It's hard for me to explain, I guess. I like it because it does remind me of the fact that we made it that day. They didn't, but we made it that day. And it's a nice tribute to them, I think. They were only doing the same thing we were doing. We were just trying to make a living. And that's what they were doing too.
The thing that I think about so much is, how in the hell did we get out of there? How did we ever hold on that long? Why did we blow so far away from the island, and turn around and come right back in by the island? Why did that piece of tar paper pick that particular time to blow off the roof when I had just gotten my lifejacket on my arm and everything so I could wave it?
KATZ: What do you think was going on? Why do you think that was?
PARISH: I think God saved us. That's the only explanation I have. He didn't— that wasn't the day he wanted us.
KATZ: Chris Parish is 72 now, with kids and grandkids. After his dad died, he inherited his house with a big picture window that overlooks Lake Superior. John Lufkins is 82. He’s still not sure why he lived or how he managed to make it back alive with Chris and his dad. But he figures there was a reason, even if he doesn’t know it.
LUFKINS: I don't know. There were probably some goals that I probably had to accomplish, and I like to think I probably have accomplished a couple of them. Maybe it was only to save a couple of people. Who knows?
