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Hidden stories have a way of finding the light. In this fascinating deep dive, we uncover two previously unknown documents that reshape our understanding of the 1915 Eastland disaster that claimed over 800 lives in the Chicago River.

The first discovery reveals how the tragedy transformed American journalism. Through a December 1915 Associated Press Service Bulletin, we glimpse the behind-the-scenes response of the nation's leading news agency and hear the voices of newspaper editors across the Midwest praising the AP's "remarkable" coverage for its "promptness and accuracy." These testimonials from Kentucky to South Dakota demonstrate how thoroughly this Chicago disaster reverberated nationwide.

Even more compelling is the eyewitness account of the Burns brothers - Luke, an attorney visiting Chicago on his honeymoon, and his physician brother Peter who responded to the disaster scene. Their harrowing story, published in a small Minnesota newspaper but never incorporated into mainstream Eastland narratives, provides chilling details: a woman swimmer killed by a barrel thrown from the overturned ship, a Polish survivor who saved 25 people through a porthole, and grieving mothers who lost multiple children. Luke Burns minced no words, calling it "criminal negligence" and describing the Eastland as "not seaworthy" and "top-heavy."

This pattern of finding crucial historical evidence in overlooked sources raises profound questions about historical preservation. As with many neglected chapters of history, it's often independent researchers, genealogists, podcasters, and dedicated volunteers who step up to document stories that might otherwise vanish forever. The truth, as they say, has a way of surfacing - even if it takes a century and everyday citizens to bring it to light.

Want to help preserve these important stories? Subscribe to the podcast, visit flowerintheriver.com, and consider picking up the book that started this journey of historical recovery.

Resources:

• Boyer, Dwight. True Tales of the Great Lakes. Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1971.
• Associated Press Service Bulletin, December 17, 1915
• The Virginia Enterprise, Virginia, Minnesota, July 30, 1915

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Three young engineers fresh out of Cornell University were running late to the Western Electric company picnic on July 24, 1915. One had overslept, making the trio miss their train and arrive at the Chicago River docks just as their coworkers were boarding the SS Eastland. Redirected to a secondary boat due to overcrowding, they stood on a bridge and watched in horror as the Eastland slowly tilted, then capsized in the shallow water, trapping hundreds inside. Their tardiness had saved their lives.

This remarkable eyewitness account of the Eastland disaster might have been lost forever if not for Jake Fry, who decades later told the story to his friend's son. The friend, Ira Cole, had never spoken of that day to his own family—a silence that mirrored many survivors' responses to trauma. What makes this account particularly valuable is how it captures not just the immediate catastrophe but its aftermath: the desperate rescue attempts continuing into the night, the train ride home with grief-stricken survivors, and the sleepless night that followed.

Both Ira Cole and Jake Fry went on to have distinguished careers in engineering—Cole becoming a pioneering electrical engineer with Lockhead Electronics and Fry developing the relay system for long-distance direct dialing at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Their contributions to technology and their communities illustrate the profound ripple effects of survival. Had they boarded the Eastland that day, not only would they have likely perished along with over 800 others, but their innovations and family legacies would never have existed.

This story, published in Thousand Islands Life magazine in 2011 yet overlooked by many Eastland researchers until now, reminds us how easily historical memory can fade without deliberate preservation.

Too often, disasters like the Eastland are sensationalized, packaged, and sold. But in that process, the real people disappear. Each disaster holds countless individual stories—voices silenced, memories carried forward quietly. Recovering those narratives isn’t just history; it’s resistance against forgetting. What parts of your family’s story are still unspoken, waiting for someone to ask the right questions?

Resources:

• Cole, Rachel. “The Eastland Disaster.” Thousand Islands Life Magazine, 13 Nov. 2011, Note: The comments on the original 2011 article add an interesting layer to this story. They’re worth a look if you’d like to see how the narrative was being shaped at the time.
• Boyer, Dwight. True Tales of the Great Lakes. Chapter 2, “Who Speaks for the Little Feller?”

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• YouTube: Flower in the River - A Family Tale Finally Told - YouTube
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• The opening/closing song is Twilight by 8opus
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One shout could have saved lives.
On the morning of the Eastland Disaster, a lone street peddler saw the danger before anyone else. His warning was met with laughter and scorn, and while his experience was recounted in the papers, it was under the wrong name.

In this episode, we return to Dwight Boyer’s True Tales of the Great Lakes and follow one story back in time—stepping onto Chicago’s Clark Street Bridge on July 24, 1915, and tracing the trail from century-old newspapers—first to the real name, and then to his origins in Sicily and finally to the heart of Little Sicily (Chicago), along with the life he built before and after that pivotal morning.

This is the story of how a simple error—repeated for more than a century instead of being researched—can bury a legacy… and how setting it right can bring a hero back into the light.

Resources Referenced

• Boyer, Dwight. True Tales of the Great Lakes. Chapter 2, “Who Speaks for the Little Feller?”
• Chicago Tribune, July 25, 1915.
• Daily Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), July 26, 1915.
• Lombardo, Calogero. “A Brief History of Chicago’s Little Sicily Neighborhood and the Saint Philip Benizi Parish.” 2013.
• Additional Music: Multiple tracks sourced from Pixabay. Licensed for free use under the Pixabay Content License.

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• The opening/closing song is Twilight by 8opus
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In this week’s episode, I continue reading from "Who Speaks for the Little Feller?"—Dwight Boyer’s unforgettable chapter in "True Tales of the Great Lakes" (1971), one of the earliest and most detailed accounts of the Eastland disaster. A meticulous maritime journalist, Boyer combined accuracy with deep empathy, giving voice to the people whose lives were forever altered that day.

This isn’t just history—it’s storytelling with heart. Names, quotes, context—it’s all there. Decades before anyone else tried to piece this together, Boyer had already done the work. George Hilton later built on that foundation with scholarly precision in Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic (1995), reinforcing what Boyer had captured through journalism and humanity.

Yet, in the 21st century, so many of those same stories still missing from modern retellings--specially the ones that are recycled constantly.

This episode is about honoring the storytellers who came before—and the real people whose lives they refused to let slip away. The work was already done. It’s time we reconnect with it.

• Book website: https://www.flowerintheriver.com/
• LinkTree: @zettnatalie | Linktree
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• YouTube: Flower in the River - A Family Tale Finally Told - YouTube
• Medium: Natalie Zett – Medium
• The opening/closing song is Twilight by 8opus
• Other music. Artlist

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What We’re Covering:

• Maritime journalist Dwight Boyer (1912–1977) published a detailed Eastland Disaster account in 1971—more than two decades before most major works on the subject
• His chapter in True Tales of the Great Lakes draws from courtroom records, witness interviews, and primary source material
• Although George Hilton cited Boyer in Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic, Boyer's work has otherwise been mostly overlooked or uncredited

Highlights from Dwight Boyer's Career:

• Boyer wrote for the Toledo Blade (1944–1954) and Cleveland Plain Dealer (into the early 1970s)
• Respected journalist, known for precision, solid journalism, and vivid storytelling
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cited his work in its Official Guide to Great Lakes Materials

Resources:

• Boyer, Dwight. True Tales of the Great Lakes. Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1971. — Chapter 2: “Who Speaks for the Little Feller” (Eastland Disaster)
• Hilton, George W. Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995.— Includes citation of Boyer’s 1971 account
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A Guide to Selected Great Lakes Maritime History Materials at the National Archives–Great Lakes Region. Washington, D.C.: NOAA Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management, 1992.

• Book website: https://www.flowerintheriver.com/
• LinkTree: @zettnatalie | Linktree
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-z-87092b15/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zettnatalie/
• YouTube: Flower in the River - A Family Tale Finally Told - YouTube
• Medium: Natalie Zett – Medium
• The opening/closing song is Twilight by 8opus
• Other music. Artlist

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Released on July 24, 2025 – the 110th anniversary of the Eastland Disaster

On this pivotal anniversary, I’m sharing one of the most haunting firsthand accounts ever recorded about July 24, 1915—a story that doesn’t end when the ship rolled, but follows the tragedy all the way to its most chilling conclusion.

TRIGGER WARNING: There are graphic descriptions of death in this episode.

Jack Woodford was a 20-year-old aspiring writer standing on a Chicago River bridge when he witnessed something impossible: a massive steamer slowly rolling over "like a whale going to take a nap" in calm water on a sunny morning. But Jack's story doesn't end with the disaster itself. It continues through his swim across the river, his frantic reporting for the Chicago Herald and Examiner, and ultimately to a moment that would change his understanding of life and death forever.

At 3 AM, Jack was alone in an emergency morgue with hundreds of Eastland victims. What he experienced there defied explanation - a presence, an awareness, something that suggested the boundary between life and death wasn't as clear as anyone believed. In his own words: "You could stand in the middle of the floor and by swiveling, see them all... It was as though their brains, having been taken out of play, their thought processes, somehow continued."

This episode features Jack's complete, unedited account from his 1962 autobiography - a powerful reminder that the Eastland disaster's most compelling stories often come from voices that have been overlooked or ignored.

About Jack Woodford: Born Josiah Pitts Woolfolk in 1894/5, Jack became a controversial novelist, pulp writer, and author of the famous writing manual "Trial and Error." He died in 1971, leaving behind over 100 novels and this extraordinary eyewitness account.

RESOURCES:

• The Autobiography of Jack Woodford (1962, published under Jack Woolfolk)
• The Pulp Scribbler meets the Capsized Ship (Flower in the River)

• Book website: https://www.flowerintheriver.com/
• LinkTree: @zettnatalie | Linktree
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• YouTube: Flower in the River - A Family Tale Finally Told - YouTube
• Medium: Natalie Zett – Medium
• The opening/closing song is Twilight by 8opus
• Other music. Artlist

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What if being late saved your life?

In this episode of Flower in the River, we follow the eerie ripple of that question through time.

On the morning of July 24, 1915, Tom Milton and Willard Haynes were in Chicago when the Eastland Disaster unfolded. Milton missed boarding the ship by a single minute. Haynes, a physician, arrived just as chaos overtook the riverfront and assisted at the scene.

Their connection to the disaster surfaced in 1954 when both were living in Texas. That year, the Houston Chronicle published an interview with Milton in which he mentioned the Eastland Disaster. After reading the article, Haynes wrote a letter to Milton sharing his own experience of being there that day—opening with the words:

“Stranger things have happened…”

Their names do not appear in any known accounts of the Eastland Disaster. Their stories remained overlooked—until now.

This episode is about memory, timing, transparency, and the strange ways history finds its way back. It’s also a story within a story: about family archives, investigative instincts, and the quiet dignity of men whose roles in history were left unrecorded for nearly 40 years.

Spoiler alert: the eBay item that sparked this episode is now safely archived at the Newberry Library in Chicago!

Resources

• The Actor and the Doctor: Converging Lives Post-Eastland (released July 5, 2024) featuring the detailed stories of Tom Milton and Willard Haynes.
• Newberry Library, Eastland Disaster Digital Collection

• Book website: https://www.flowerintheriver.com/
• LinkTree: @zettnatalie | Linktree
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• YouTube: Flower in the River - A Family Tale Finally Told - YouTube
• Medium: Natalie Zett – Medium
• The opening/closing song is Twilight by 8opus
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In this episode, we revisit the Bell Telephone News from August 1915 and the stories of extraordinary individuals who responded to the Eastland disaster with courage and quick thinking:

• Fred J. Lippert - The telephone company engineer who happened to be wearing his bathing suit that morning (planning to swim after work) and dove repeatedly into the Chicago River to rescue victims. But his heroism didn't stop there - his entire life was defined by service and sacrifice.
• George Spiegelhauer - The methodical rescuer who knew how to operate the cutting-edge "pulmotor" resuscitation devices when others couldn't. His story has a beautiful twist involving beekeeping that perfectly captures his caring nature.
• H. Haberstroh - The vacationing boatman whose pleasure craft was pressed into rescue service by police.
• James Carney - The unsung hero who literally had to swim 100 feet in semi-darkness to install emergency telephone lines at the life-saving station, ensuring communication could flow during the crisis.

The Fire That Almost Was

I'll also share the spine-chilling story of an unnamed plant department worker who prevented what could have been a catastrophic fire at the Second Regiment Armory - where hundreds of people were gathered to identify their loved ones. Imagine the panic that could have ensued.

The Bigger Picture

Though freely available in digital archives, these firsthand accounts have remained largely overlooked for more than a century. They reveal not just moments of individual heroism, but the critical, behind-the-scenes work that connected rescuers, hospitals, morgues, and desperate families—long before the digital age. In just a few hours, the telephone company installed nearly 40 emergency lines, creating a vital communication network during one of Chicago’s darkest days.

These stories raise important questions about historical memory: Who gets remembered, and why? By reclaiming their stories, we not only honor their courage, but also gain a fuller understanding of how communities respond in moments of crisis.

Resources

• Selfless Saviors: Two Extraordinary Rescuers in the Eastland Disaster
• Bell Telephone News, 1915
• American Ancestors

• Book website: https://www.flowerintheriver.com/
• LinkTree: @zettnatalie | Linktree
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-z-87092b15/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zettnatalie/
• YouTube: Flower in the River - A Family Tale Finally Told - YouTube
• Medium: Natalie Zett – Medium
• The opening/closing song is Twilight by 8opus
• Other music. Artlist