Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

The Pulp Scribbler meets the Capsized Ship

• Natalie Zett • Season 3 • Episode 98

Share episode

Send us a text

In this episode, I open with a poignant story about my mother’s friend Donna—a moment of compassion that left an indelible mark on my life. It’s a small, tender memory, but one that unlocks a much bigger story—one of the most compelling and overlooked accounts I’ve come across in my research on the Eastland disaster.

Now, picture this: Chicago, July 1915. A young writer, already living on the edge of convention, leans against a bridge railing, lost in thought. Suddenly, chaos erupts. The Eastland, a ship loaded with unsuspecting passengers, capsizes right before his eyes. Jack Woodford—writer, observer, dreamer—is frozen in time. What he witnesses changes him forever, but it’s not just the event itself that leaves a mark. It’s how he chooses to capture it. His words are raw, immediate, philosophical—striking in a way no other account of the disaster dares to be.

And yet, history tucked his testimony away, like a forgotten page in an old book. Why? That question gnawed at me, pulling me deeper into Jack’s life. He wasn’t just an eyewitness; he was a man who lived boldly. From churning out pulp novels to crafting how-to writing guides, from brushes with Hollywood’s glamour to clashes with the law, Jack Woodford was a force to be reckoned with.

In this episode, we unravel Jack’s story—his life, his work, his haunting connection to the Eastland disaster. We’ll dive into the immediate chaos he captured so vividly and the philosophical musings that followed. Along the way, we’ll confront some uncomfortable truths: who gets to decide which stories matter? Why do some voices echo through time, while others disappear?

Join me as we bridge the gap between past and present, exploring not just the disaster but the lasting ripples it sends through all our lives. This is about more than a tragedy. It’s about memory, resilience, and the power of storytelling to shape how we see ourselves and the world around us.

Resources

Natalie Zett:

Hello, I'm Natalie Zett and welcome to Flower in the River. This podcast, inspired by my book of the same name, explores the 1915 Eastland disaster in Chicago and its enduring impact, particularly on my family's history. We'll explore the intertwining narratives of others impacted by this tragedy as well, and we'll dive into writing and genealogy and uncover the surprising supernatural elements that surface in family history research. Come along with me on this journey of discovery. Hey, this is Natalie, and welcome to Flower in the River, episode 98.

Natalie Zett:

When I was a child, my mom had a friend named Donna. Donna was one of those people. I'm sure you know somebody like her. She just lit up a room. She was kind, comical, good with kids and we adored her and loved it when she came around. But then one day I noticed that Donna stopped coming around. I asked my mom about it coming around. I asked my mom about it and she said Donna's sick and she's in the hospital. Well, that worried me and I said what's wrong with her? Did she have to have an operation? My mom paused and said gently, it's not that kind of hospital. It's a hospital for when the mind gets sick. The body gets sick and the mind gets sick. Sometimes Donna is in a mental hospital. I didn't fully understand what that meant at the time, but the way my mom explained it putting the mind on the same level as the body somehow that left me with the comforting thought that Donna was sick, but she could get better. Here's the thing, my mom's words, which have stayed with me since that time. They carried no judgment, only compassion, and I'd like to think that I inherited some of that from my mom as well. But as I grew older, I realized that not everyone has had that kind of mom or that kind of grace or understanding extended to them.

Natalie Zett:

Which brings me to someone I want to introduce you to today Jack Woodford. At least that was the name he was known by. Let's get into some of his biographical information and I'll tell you why this person who slipped under the Eastland disaster history radar really needs to be front and center. Jack Woodford was a writer, among many things that he was. His birth name was Josiah Pitts Woolfolk Jr and he was born on March 25, 1894, in Chicago, to someone also named Josiah Pitts Woolfolk, who was a teacher according to the 1900 and 1910 census, and Ada Woolfolk that's his mom. I'll do a brief timeline of his life. So in 1910, when Josiah, aka Jack, was 16, he was living with his parents on Provident Avenue, which is in Winnetka and Winnetka, illinois, is a village just about 16 miles north of Chicago and Jack was working for Western Electric. And Jack was working for Western Electric. Sadly, a year later Jack's father died and things really start to spiral out of control for that family because in 1913, jack's mother disappeared and Jack reported that she was despondent after her husband died and eventually she returned. I'm not sure what the circumstances were, but this was reported in the Evanston Lakeshore News on March 6, 1913.

Natalie Zett:

Somewhere between 1913 and 1915, jack segued into becoming a writer and he seemed to be on his way. He was young, don't forget, he was 20, 21, but he was on his way. You'll hear his prose and you can hear what a good writer he was. But on the morning of July 24th 1915, everything changed for Jack. I'm going to read from his book and he has written many books, by the way but this book is called the Autobiography of Jack Woodford. Here's a bit of a warning he strays quite a bit kind of a stream of consciousness type of writer, but he returns to his original topic. So bear with the writing. But the writing is actually quite fascinating and very, very evocative, and his writing, as is typical of that time period, is very graphic. So be aware of that. Here we go, jack wrote.

Natalie Zett:

I was goofing along one morning in one of those states of antipathetic destitute, thoroughly and completely bored and dissatisfied with life. When I came to the Chicago River, my complaint was that nothing ever happened in my life. The river and the lake, however, usually lifted me. I was near the mouth of the river and all the paraphernalia of even minor water travel usually interested me. But I was 21, and although I had figured and schemed and consulted, I could not devise any means whatsoever to get a passport. This morning the sun was shining and before crossing the bridge I leaned on the railing and let the lazy flow of the river soothe me. And then movement caught my eye. I looked up across the river as I watched in disoriented stupefaction a steamer large as an ocean liner slowly turned over on its side as though it were a whale going to take a nap. I didn't believe a huge steamer had done this before my eyes Lashed to a dock in perfectly calm water, in excellent weather, with no explosion, no, nothing. I thought I had gone crazy. My mind totally refused to accept it. I was completely dazed. I couldn't move.

Natalie Zett:

Anything that huge and that sudden can do that to a mind. It has some sort of valves which shut off intellection when a thing like that happens, perhaps physiologically to protect the heart or the brain from unusually traumatic strain. The sudden daze that a thing like this causes is unbelievably hypnotic. You can't move. Your mind stops turning over altogether because it has no intention of encompassing a huge bite it can't chew up. My stomach became violently upset. I thought I was going to retch, but all this lasted briefly perhaps less than a second really, although it seemed longer. I have seen a whole crowd undergo that same reaction when somebody jumps off a high building and hits the cement and people, for the first time in their lives, realize that a body does not come apart and throw its cogs in all directions.

Natalie Zett:

When a thing like that happens, but of all things, bounces, screaming, utter confusion, followed by one of the greatest acts of quick thinking I have ever seen before or since the captain of a river tug parked only a short distance beyond, put on full speed and rammed the steamer lying on his side at utter risk of wrecking the tug. Thus rammed against the body of the steamer, the prow caught and held. The captain of the tug swung the rear end toward a catwalk at the base of the pier, next to which was a ladder. If I had a mind like the captain of the tug, that would work such genius in a split second. I would be very happy about the whole thing. Maybe there is, as some psychologists say, a supra-mind which takes over at times like that and directs the more or less objective surface mind.

Natalie Zett:

And then I ran like crazy with one thing in my mind. There wasn't much of anybody around. It was a time of day when reporters would be inactive. There weren't even any police around. The tug was blowing its emergency blasts constantly and I knew that would alert everybody. Hysterical, screaming people were all over the side of the ship now like maggots feasting upon a whale, slipping and sliding off into the water. I had just seen 900 people die. I hadn't the faintest connection with the Chicago Herald and Examiner, but I did have one of their press cards given to me by one of the staff. I took it out and put it in my hat band.

Natalie Zett:

I knew that here was a magnificent bonus for everybody. Everyone in the world in the next 24 hours would want to know what caused such a seemingly preternatural phenomenon. There wasn't a cop in sight when I reached the ladder next to the tug. I just barely made it, however, because a moment later the tug was filled with enough people clambering aboard from the hull to swamp it. And they would have swamped it but for the mighty efforts of that incredible captain who somehow got them across it and started along the catwalk below the dock. Completely dazed and disoriented, they would then shove each other and fall into the river. Some of them stopped to try to locate others, screaming the names of children and other companions. Women had their clothes torn off as men fought them to get away from there, somehow knowing directly or instinctively, that there was every possibility of an explosion of the boilers on the ship which might wreck the immediate vicinity in all directions. The captain of the tug would of course have known that he ignored the exigency and performed, minute by minute, stunts of human rearranging that ordinarily it would take ten men to perform. Even so, he seemed to be dazed, as though he were doing it unconsciously in a dream.

Natalie Zett:

All the time I have described here, from the time I stood at the other end of the bridge until what I just described encompassed approximately three to four minutes. The most sluggish of human beings, under the impulsion of the possible necessity for leaving this world of size and going to quote-unquote eternal bliss, can move faster than anyone who has never seen a thing like this has the faintest idea. You get the impression, watching them, that they can move through the resistance of objectivity supernaturally, but it takes the actual imminence of death to cause this. I've watched people move faster under exigencies where death might not be a clear and present danger, and they do not move that fast. I have never seen people move that fast before or since move that fast before or since, not even in running out of buildings that were on me. But I have seen people run into burning buildings that fast to get some other person with whom they were psychologically identified, making me think that the umbilical cord, however much objectively severed, is not subjectively severed. Sometimes, not ever. I do believe that all objective matters are mere symbolizations of more powerful subjective matters, a belief which I know will bewilder the academically brainwashed. But as Whitney Bolton puts it, quote we have one thing in common None of us will ever really know who was right and who was wrong. Quote.

Natalie Zett:

The distant, eerie bedlam of the tug's emergency whistle, which sounded like a voice out of hell, had reached the life-saving station at the mouth of the river and they were dispatching equipment. I could hear the sounds of me equipment and police coming from all directions. I could also hear two crewmen from the steamer who had somehow lamentably saved themselves without putting themselves out any talking. They were just inside the door to the engine room. In order to be heard above the tug's whistle, they had to shout. Their conversation was exactly what I knew would be wanted. Quote. It was the goddamn extra deck they built on the river. Water is low today. Keel was on the bottom. They all went on the river side of the boat to watch the river. While they waited there were at least a thousand more people on board than the license permits. End. Quote. That was it.

Natalie Zett:

I knew reporters would be arriving soon, but there was no way I could get away. Unthinkable to try to get away the way I had come aboard. Men and women were fighting for the place where contact with the dock was made by the tug. The captain of the tug was in there throwing men around like a madman trying to make them give the women and children a chance. The frightened men were all for killing the women and children if necessary, in order to get that contact with terra firma.

Natalie Zett:

And was I perfectly calm? Indeed, I was shaking. I was persuaded there would be another catastrophe of some kind, if not a huge boiler explosion when cold water reached the ship's engine room in quantities, then an accident to the tug. If there was a sudden shift to the riverside of that small boat, it would undoubtedly go over. I could watch and see the most thoughtful of the male victims doing the most intelligent of all things. They were in calm and leisurely fashion, simply swimming across the river to the other side, where there was no trouble at all.

Natalie Zett:

So I took the stuff out of the pockets of my coat it was a warm day and I had little on I stuffed it into my pants pocket. Fortunately, my hip pockets had buttons at the top, as most hip pockets should have in Chicago, and I lashed down everything. I threw my coat away, my tie, my shoes rolled up my pants, lowered myself over the side of the tug and struck across the river. I wasn't a particularly good swimmer, but it wasn't far. I got there with the greatest of ease. Now the bedlam was absolute. Every boat in the river was blowing its emergency horn. Small boats were filling the river.

Natalie Zett:

I clambered up a ladder leading to the top of the dock from the catwalk on the north side of the river and, having lost my socks during the swim, started running barefoot for the bridge. I started running barefoot for the bridge. It had been closed off. I had taken the press card from my hat and stuck it back into my purse and secured the ladder by buttoning into my hip pocket. The card was soaked, but I got through police lines with it to the south side of the river and thence barefoot to the examiner office not far away. All this time I hadn't seen a single newspaper man. When I got to the examiner office, only a skeleton crew was there hanging onto the phones.

Natalie Zett:

The whole United States had heard about it by newspaper private wire, but nobody had a word on it. Reporters couldn't even get out on the dock on the south side of the river. Police had cut it off and wouldn't even honor press cards. Ambulance personnel were using the dock. A minor press room official looked at me and rubbed his eyes and said where in the hell have you been? I was on the Eastland when it turned over, was going on the excursion, I knew a guy at Western Electric who took me along. I was on the tug. I swam the river to get here. Who's got eight and a half shoes around here?

Natalie Zett:

He was speechless for a minute. He was being screamed at by wire from all over the United States for details and all he or any other newspaper in Chicago knew was that a boat had turned over in the river. He hadn't had any reporters to send anywhere. Most papers hadn't at that time of day, Either they were at home or covering routine assignments. Executives had gone out to cover it. They couldn't get anywhere near it. Hearst had heard about it and was raising all billy hell with the main Hearst paper, the Chicago American. It wouldn't have occurred to him or anybody to bother the Chicago Herald and Examiner, which was supported for decades and nobody could ever understand why by the other Hearst paper, the Chicago American. They weren't even supposed to know about a disaster until they read about it in American.

Natalie Zett:

Up to this time, a half hour had not yet passed and here was the lowly and despised Harold and Examiner, equipped with a man who had, quote-unquote, been on the Eastland when it turned over. I was the only man in the newspaper office in the world who knew the highly disgraceful and thoroughly actionable legally reasons why the Eastland had turned over, and all I was bleeding about was a pair of eight-and-a-half shoes. What a nightmare. Hours and hours I hung around there bleeding out what little I knew, describing and re-describing everything, while everybody in the place who could write on a typewriter took it down. That was in the days of extra papers, a racket which died out with the radio. The city was accustomed then about an extra a week from some paper with nothing in it.

Natalie Zett:

This was the most legitimate occasion for an extra since the Chicago fire. It was carnage. I quit altogether until somebody got me some shoes I could wear. I took off everything but my shorts and had people drying out the stuff in front of electric heaters, which made the already hot room vile. But on and on it went. The first thing of importance was that I was to get paid for it, but I wasn't going to get any credit for any of it, which I didn't want. Quote, take the cash and let the credit go. To give me credit would have prevented the wild bleats about the Chicago Herald and Examiner that it should have been on its toes because a lousy sex writer who had chiseled a press card, having to have been there, would have been just too too much. And besides there was the slight matter of my not having been on the Eastland when it turned over, but I had been on it for similar excursions previous to that.

Natalie Zett:

What fascinated everybody was the fact that I had found out what caused it and that there was a stink involved, with regulations and inspections having been ignored or bribed into quiescence, which turned out to be true. There were nine or ten government investigations, half a dozen city ones and whatnot. None of them came to anything. Some minor character, as usual, got the blame and everybody hushed up. Since it was so flagrant it couldn't be fully exposited without hurting really big politicians. Later they raised the thing, took off the top heavy deck and I guess it is still used by the Navy for training recruits at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. It had been a Western electric picnic. The boat always before had been used for highly colorful purposes. Why it had to turn over with a load of all the pious, hardworking citizens of Chicago is a not-too-inviting mystery. But you are invited to it if you wish.

Natalie Zett:

I wasn't particularly affected by the accident itself, although it left an indelible impression on my mind. What did in some way completely change me was something that happened afterward. An emergency morgue was open to get the 900 or so dead all together in one place where private undertakers could call for them. This was a small auditorium and they were laid out on the floor all over the place as they had been found naked or fully clothed. People tried to sort out the dead children to find out which bodies to put them near. An attempt was made to group families. Women had all lost their purses and had no identification. Children had none. Even many of the men had none. So people who might know them and be able to help in this sorting were asked to come night and day. Thousands of others came, so it was hard to know who to admit. It came to admitting anybody and everybody by this.

Natalie Zett:

I was too nervously exhausted to sleep, so I went in a side door with my dried-out press card and had a look that I'll never forget. I remember one big man, fully clothed, who had evidently been a sport. He was about 30 and had on the wildest sports shirt money could buy. Then white shoes, striped pants, a red blazer, a huge imitation diamond on his red tie, magnificently built and over six feet, and there he lay, looking so silly with his mouth open and for some reason his eyes popped clear out of their sockets. When I got in it was about 3 am and there were few people in the room, few live people.

Natalie Zett:

It is the strangest sensation in the world to be in a room full of people, none of them breathing. The unnatural stillness that accrues then is apprehended as deadly danger of some sort by the subconscious, which notes the lack of breathing. And there is another apperception far more subtle and totally unexplainable. Several times in riots I was aware, as all policemen and reporters are aware, that there is such a thing as mental infection, some form of extrasensory perception which appears to come from berserk minds and upsets the equanimity of the most experienced officers or reporters. They never talk about it unless needled to do so, and then they will all admit that it is very hard to control and is a very definitely recognized sort of obsession mentally. These people in the huge room of death, all of them visible at the same time, nearly a thousand. You could stand in the middle of the floor and by swiveling, see them all. They had died under conditions of extreme stress. From them you took the same extrasensory perception if that is what it is that you took from people in a riot it was as though their brains having been taken out of play, their organic brains, their thought processes, somehow continued. Not only could I feel it, those around me were obviously aware of it also, and one of them later told me he had the same feeling toward it that I had.

Natalie Zett:

There has long been contention among doctors as to when death actually occurs, whether at the time of the stoppage of the heart or after Apparently. It is not at the time of the stoppage of the heart or after Apparently. It is not at the time of the stoppage of the heart. Since people have been revived whose hearts have been long stopped, the feeling that comes from a lot of dead people around one and soldiers have often confirmed to me precisely what I am saying here. This is one of extreme, unexplained nervous apprehension not explained or dealt upon even in the standard book on nervous apprehension written under the title of Nervous Apprehension by Hackel. He attributes all nervous apprehension to sex bases.

Natalie Zett:

The sort of thing I am describing is nothing of the sort. It is something esoteric and, since it is not explainable academically, should probably not be talked about at all, but it is there. If you had been there, you would have sworn that some sort of thinking was still going on, deriving out of or attached in some way to these people An awareness, perhaps, that I hate to think of, don't you? Again, I am not being mystic, I'm just being puzzled. Everything puzzles me. I too was told what to think about everything, but I am curiously unamenable to that sort of thing, a fact which I deplore as much as I do those who have reviewed my books and found that I am silly because I do not think as they do. I deplore it because I too would like to do the easy thing also, nobody is more mentally lazy than I am, but that room remains with me.

Natalie Zett:

It totally changed my ideas as to life, and death lessened to me the importance of life. People look so silly when they are dead. Not pitiful, just silly. All the things that sport thought were so important to him, and lying there he was an ugly silly lump when his expectations as touched his life had been so thoroughly other-what. I have always been aware of that ever since and not too huffed or puffed about what tomorrow will bring it, reduced in my thought what might be called importances, liabilities, pressing exigencies.

Natalie Zett:

It was, on the whole, a relieving catharsis. Catharsis, I wouldn't have missed it. It had value, I think, of the habit of the feasts of the early Egyptians, greeks, romans and others of bringing miniature skeletons or death's heads into feastings to maintain a sense of proportion. Maybe that habit, if revived at our own wild parties, would serve as a sort of tranquilizing influence, as it seemed to in those days. It says you'll be lying around somewhere someday, perhaps within the hour, looking like a ridiculous blob. So why attach any importance at all to your euphoria or your manic depressive disposition? When people look at you in your coffin, they will have a hard-to-suppress impulse to laugh at you while feeling cozily alive themselves. That is all. None of it is important. Relax. If we could just learn that instead of the preposterous pep drivel with which our brains are drowned by our more extroversive confers. I think perhaps my habit of quietly withdrawing started from that day At least that is as far back as I can remember the beginning of it, listening rather than adding to endless cackle which merely repeats what philosophers and psychologists and metaphysicians said centuries ago and repeating it in an inept, garbled fashion. Far less well. That's the end of that.

Natalie Zett:

Reading the whole autobiography of Jack Woodford is quite the fascinating journey and this was published in 1962. So that was just 47 years after the Eastland disaster. But it's a good many years. And by then Jack had a very jagged career path and I'll tell you more about that. And it is sad really that his story has been left out of the telling of the Eastland disaster and I think why that is the case is that Jack was a very polarizing figure. So what happened to him after the Eastland disaster?

Natalie Zett:

He was already writing and he was writing what I think he called sex books or sex novels. He was writing pulp novels. At the turn of the 20th century these pulp novels were controversial but when you look at them now they're kind of quaint. But Jack was also an esteemed writing teacher and he wrote a number of books about writing for writers. In fact when I saw his name it seemed so familiar to me and I thought I had one of his books at one point. It was a classic on how to write and it is very well done.

Natalie Zett:

But let me continue with his biography and if you want to read about him, check out his books. They are available on the Internet Archive and the selection that I just read to you that was from the autobiography of Jack Woodford. It was copyright 1962 under the name Jack Woolfolk, which I think is interesting. So he reverted to his birth surname and you can get copies that are very pricey on Amazon or you can get the e-book on Kobo Books that's K-O-B-O. Kobo Books is another alternative for e-books and audiobooks. I publish through there as well. A lot of independent authors do so. I'll put a link in the show notes. You might want to check them out. Jack's book well, it is an interesting read all the way through and I'm still working my way through it.

Natalie Zett:

But Jack was a very fine writer he really was, and his description as a witness to the Eastland disaster is incredible, Very memorable. So what happened after the Eastland disaster is incredible, very memorable. So what happened after the Eastland disaster? On November 20th 1916, he married Josephine Hutchings in Manhattan. They married just three days after they met and after their marriage they returned to Chicago and he continued working as a writer. Sometimes he worked as an operator, sometimes I'm not sure what he did actually, but in 1919, josephine and Jack had a daughter, luella, who also turned out to be quite a talented writer, quite a talented writer. And sometime afterward Josephine and Jack divorced. Jack got custody of Luella, which was an interesting thing to have happened at that point in time. Usually custody went to the mother and Luella well, she had a promising career. I saw one photo of her and she was quite like movie star, beautiful, and she and her dad did go to Hollywood where he worked as a writer for a while. But according to the articles I've read, jack alienated a lot of people and sadly, luella had her own challenges. She never really reached the potential she could have because Luella was in and out of various psychiatric hospitals throughout her life. There's a lot more to Jack's biography there really is but I want to read a closing piece about him. This is his obituary. It's from the Corpus Christi Caller Times, monday, may 17, 1971. Headline Prolific 1930s writer Jack Woodford dies. Williamsburg, virginia.

Natalie Zett:

Josiah Pitts, woolfolk, who published hundreds of short stories and a dozen or more novels under the name Jack Woodford, died early Sunday at Eastern State Hospital. He was born in Chicago in 1894 and educated at Northwestern University. A former telegrapher, he typed at a machine gun speed. He claimed he could turn out a 1,200-word article in less than an hour without corrections. In the 1930s he wrote mildly pornographic novels for the circulating libraries under such titles as Sin and Such White Meat and Love in Virginia and such White meat and love in Virginia. Although he lived in Hollywood, texas and elsewhere, he spent much of his adult life in Richmond. His 1933 book Trial and Error was one of the most widely read how-to-write-fiction books ever published, with an introduction by Arnold Greenwich, editor of Esquire. Trial and and error was reprinted many times. He believed commercial fiction writing was a racket and took his theme from Samuel Johnson. Quote hard times. He was convicted of mail fraud and served a term in a federal penitentiary, an experience he wrote about in his published book A Home Away From Home. Eastern state officials said Sunday his body was unclaimed. It will be turned over to the state for burial.

Natalie Zett:

I'll tell you a little bit about the hospital where Jack died. It has an interesting history as well and the idea of Jack being in this place to me is very intriguing. So he died in Eastern State Hospital. This is a psychiatric hospital and get this. It was the first public facility in the United States constructed solely for the care and treatment of the mentally ill. In the summer of 1770, colonial legislators met in Williamsburg, the capital of the Virginia colony, and passed a bill authorizing the construction of a hospital for this purpose. The building was erected on an eight-acre site near the College of William and Mary and the first patients were admitted on October 12, 1773. The hospital provided treatment during the turbulent crises of both the Revolutionary War and the War Between the states. By the mid-1930s, eastern State Hospital had expanded significantly from its early beginnings. Because of the embellishment of colonial Williamsburg by the Rockefeller family, there was a need to relocate the hospital from its downtown site to more spacious surroundings. Dunbar Farms, which was located approximately three miles to the west, was chosen as its new site. The move was accomplished on a gradual basis and completed in 1970.

Natalie Zett:

But back to Jack. He really was an evocative writer, don't you agree? And his assessment of the experience at the Eastland disaster site really needs to be preserved and promoted. Now I've only seen the mention of Jack in two articles. I should say Jack in relationship to the Eastland disaster, and that is quite astonishing.

Natalie Zett:

I'm not sure how Jack Woodford's relationship to the Eastland was left out of the tellings and retellings of the Eastland narrative, but there's so many stories like that. After over a year of doing this, I would have to say the majority of stories that I have located and lives that I've profiled in relationship to the Eastland have never been profiled before, or I should say the only time they were profiled or published was during the time they happened, and that is really frightening to me that so many of these stories, so many of these lives, would be lost otherwise, unless somebody decides to share the stories, and this is also a way that the people of the past, the dead, speak to us. They speak to us from their time, and they have lots of messages to give to us, to share with us, to inspire, to strengthen and to cause us to scratch our heads, right. But what would be really interesting, though, is for somebody a lot of somebodies to do an in-depth analysis of the life of Jack Woodford. As for Jack, and, well, so many members of his family, I want to close with the quote that my mother shared when I opened this episode of Flower in the River the body gets sick and the mind gets sick sometimes, too. People can't always find their way out of that, yet there are so many times where people do find their way and are able to enjoy their own lives and enjoy the talents that they've been given and contribute to the world. So there always is hope.

Natalie Zett:

Jack lived in difficult times and I think the experience of the Eastland really affected him, just as similar experiences in our time can affect us. So take care, stay connected to each other and I'll talk to you next week. Hey, that's it for this episode and thanks for coming along for the ride. Please subscribe or follow so you can keep up with all the episodes, and for more information, please go to my website, that's wwwflowerintherivercom. I hope you'll consider buying my book, available as audiobook, ebook, paperback and hardcover, because I still owe people money and that's my running joke. But the one thing I'm serious about is that this podcast and my book are dedicated to the memory of all who experienced the Eastland disaster of 1915. Goodbye for now.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Natalie Zett

Host