Overview
- About 2,000 people attended Monday’s commemoration, with tickets selling out weeks in advance.
- The ceremony included reading the 29 crew names, tolling a bell 30 times to include other Great Lakes losses, and lighting the decommissioned beacon.
- U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber and Duluth Mayor Roger Reinert spoke at the event, with Reinert joining the Lighthouse Quartet for a hymn.
- Former site manager Lee Radzak, who first lit the beacon as a tribute in 1985, recounted how the observance grew into the 40th annual ritual.
- The Edmund Fitzgerald sank on Nov. 10, 1975, and its wreck lies about 530 feet down in Canadian waters with much of its taconite cargo scattered on the lakebed.