Remembering the Fitz

"I was living in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan ... barely a year out of college and two years into my first newspaper job, covering everything from school board meetings to snowmobile races for the small daily paper there.

"The fall weather had been ... strange, for that part of the world, where it usually starts snowing on Halloween and doesn't thaw out until May. Snow had fallen, but only in spits; the town had gone all gray and cold, waiting for the white blessing of true winter.

"I lived with six other women in a far-too-small house in a fairly typical student ghetto ... only in our case, we were at the end of a short street that dead-ended at a decaying bridge over the power canal which cuts downtown Sault Ste. Marie off from the rest of the town and the small college up the hill.

"The wind had begun rising early in the day. Not much rain, but what there was threatened to turn to sleet. Two of my room-mates (friends liked to call us the She-Demons, but that's another story) and I sat huddled around the gas stove in our living room, old army blankets tacked up over the doorways to conserve the heat, reading and listening to Joni Mitchell. I remember that the wind was loud, louder than I'd ever heard it, and managed to sneak through the smallest cracks around the windows and doors, making the little house whistle around us.

"Robin had just said something about it being quite a storm when suddenly the lights went out. It wasn't quite dark yet, so Jamie went to the front door to see if the lone street-light on the block was on. The wind almost ripped the door out of her hand, and she yelled for us to come look.

"At the end of the block, just at the barricaded bridge, the power line had been ripped loose, and snapped in the wind like some giant whip, sparking and crackling - and when it came in contact with the metal structure of the old bridge, it made a sound like the devil snapping his fingers ... about that time Robin noticed that each time the power line hit the bridge, *sparks* flew from the electrical outlet near the door.

"We decided to get the hell out, so we flipped off the circuit breaker, hastily packed some overnight bags and piled into Robin's '57 VW bug ... I don't recall where we were headed - some friend's house or another - but when we turned the corner a few blocks from the house, we found ourselves up to the hubcaps in gray, swirling water.

As it really wasn't raining, we were perplexed ... until we got closer to the St. Mary's River, which connects Lake Superior (via the Soo Locks) to Lake Huron ... and saw that the wind was actually *pushing the lake* up over the locks and into the streets, to a depth of about a foot.

"Understand that the lake level is normally many feet *lower* than those streets, and you'll know why I decided they'd better drop me off at the newspaper..."

Jez shivers in memory of the longest, coldest night of her life.

"Now, this paper only had five reporters, including the sports guy. We were all frantically working on storm coverage when Shine Sundstrom, the city editor (and one of the best damn newspapermen it's been my privilege to know) looked up from where he'd been monitoring the police and maritme radio bands and announced "Sounds like we've lost a ship out there."

"A quick geography lesson: Michigan's Upper Peninsula is sparsely populated. I mean *sparsely*. The Soo, as it's called, had about 15,000 residents at the time (I doubt it's much bigger now) and it was the biggest town for miles (other than its substantially larger Canadian sister across the river). As it became clear that a huge maritime disaster had happened, it also became clear that it would be impossible to cover, in the normal sense of the word. In the best of weather, the part of the Lake where the Fitz was last reported was remote and inaccessible. The closest "big" news media were hundreds of miles away in southern Michigan.

"So it fell to us - five green reporters, an editor and a couple of high school kids who normally typed sports stats - to let the outside world know what was happening in the first 24 hours or so after the ship was reported missing."

Jez closes her eyes. "Never let anyone tell you reporters don't get involved in their stories ... or that they don't care about them. We cared passionately about that ship and its men. We*knew* them - or men like them. You don't live in a small Great Lakes town without knowing guys who make their living on the freighters ... or their children and wives. The Lake, its shipping, its weather - they're all woven in so closely to life in that part of the country that they become part of you, whether you've ever set foot on a freighter or not.

"They sent me down to the shipping company offices, to a big, cold warehouse near the surging water, the place where the supply boats usually put out to restock the freighters with food and mail and other necessaries. That night ... and for days to follow ... it became something like a church, or a hospital waiting room, as women and children and men whose loved ones were on the Fitz began arriving, by ones and twos, hoping for some word that the ship was safe.

"Not exactly the kind of situation where a person can walk in, ask the typical stupid newspaper question (`so, how do you *feel*?') and leave. I knew some of these people. I wound up holding hands and making coffee and chain-smoking in the parking lot, almost as anxious as those who had an honest stake in the outcome ... and at the same time feeling somehow like a vulture, with my little notebook at the ready just in case news came in...

Jez sighs. "Well, Bill just told how the story ended. I think I went three days without sleep. I also wound up being the one stuck arranging motel rooms and a helicopter and phone lines and stuff for the `real' reporters when they were finally able to get flights up from Detroit and Chicago... a service which, a year later, contributed to my being hired by the Associated Press Detroit bureau... which, in a convoluted way, put me where I am today. Uh, wherever that is...

"It was also the night - the series of nights - when I began to understand the kind of reporter I *didn't* want to be ... when I decided the work wasn't worth doing if it couldn't be done with compassion, and that the detachment and `objectivity' most reporters are taught to espouse are really kind of a load of crap..."

Someone starts to object - after all, aren't reporters *supposed* to be objective? - and the Spinster, no longer in the business, shakes her head. "You try looking into the eyes of a 24-year-old woman who's just been told that her husband is dead at the bottom of an icy, treacherous lake ... that she'll never even get his body back ... and try remaining detached. Me, I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried with her..."

Jez salutes Bill, glad he's reminded her of something that was so pivotal to her life. She orders one of the same, and adds:

"To all whose loves are sailors, and who wait for news beside the cold and unforgiving waters."