November 12, 2003
Lives lost on the lakes
Memorial honors cadet who served on Edmund Fitzgerald
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
"May they find more peaceful weather."
Dean Hobbs lost a friend and fellow cadet 28 years ago when the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975. Speaking at the annual Mariners Memorial Service held at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy Monday afternoon, Hobbs honored his friend, David Weiss, who perished in the stormy lake. Calling November a month of remembrance, he said the Fitzgerald's sinking affected the academy.
"We lost a cadet and the alumni lost two classmates," said Hobbs, a 1976 graduate of the Great Lakes Maritime Academy and now a senior captain of the Badger car ferry. "We weren't on board and no one will ever know what happened."
Cadets and staff from the Great Lakes Maritime Academy, as well as members of the public, gathered Monday at noon to honor mariners who have perished on the Great Lakes. Assembling in the courtyard of the new Great Lakes Campus, the tribute featured a Coast Guard color guard, prayers, speeches and the reading of the names of those who perished on the Edmund Fitzgerald 28 years ago. Names of other ships lost were also read; after each name or ship a cadet tolled the bell in their memory.
"This is one of the most sacred days in the Academy's year," said Admiral John Tanner of the Great Lakes Maritime Academy.
Hobbs noted that his friend Weiss, a California native, was nicknamed 'Cowboy' and was a free spirit.
"He kind of blew with the wind and the wind was calling him to be here on the Great Lakes," he said.
During his speech, Hobbs noted the high death toll over the centuries on the Great Lakes due to storms. In the last 20 years of the 19th Century, 5,993 ships sank, the hallmark of an era that gave mariners a 1 in 12 chance of dying on the job. Storms in 1913 sank 105 ships that year alone.
But as technology improved, especially in the last half of the 20th Century, the number of shipwrecks plummeted.
"How many sank in the last part of the previous century," he asked rhetorically after his speech. "None, not one. The Edmund Fitzgerald was the last major inland seas incident."
Weather prediction is key to this improved record, with the advent of supercomputing technology allowing more accurate forecasts. Mariners today tap into National Weather Service forecasts, whose services are used by the United States Armed Forces worldwide.
"We can't control the weather but we know a whole lot more about the weather in 2003 than we did in 1975," he noted.
Safety considerations were not part of Steve Persinger's decision at mid life to make a drastic career change and enroll in the Great Lakes Maritime Academy. In the first year of a four-year program, which will result in both a bachelor's and an associate's degree, Persinger is eager for new challenges and working conditions.
He particularly likes the work schedule of mariners - two months on and one month off, giving him time to travel - plus the fact that he will no longer feel he is marking time in his life.
"I was tired of coming home every day after doing the same thing again and again," said Persinger, a deck cadet who spent the last ten years working in trucking at small airports in California. "I've always liked the lakes and my sister has a place in St. Mary's and we would sit and watch the freighters."
A passion for the boats and all aspects of mariner life, history and equipment brought Steven Haverty to the Academy last January. A first-year deck cadet, the Minnesota native grew up visiting Duluth and at first was entranced by the bridges there.
"Then it got to be about the ships going underneath the bridges," he said. "Ever since I found this place, I knew it was where I needed to be."