Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

She Took the Call. He Dove for the Lost. She Wrote Their Story.

• Natalie Zett • Season 3 • Episode 121

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In this week’s episode of Flower in the River, we unearth a powerful 1952 article written by author Olive Carruthers—an overlooked piece of Eastland Disaster history that should be widely known but has remained hidden for over 70 years. Through Carruthers’ evocative writing, we meet three remarkable figures:

  • Catherine O’Reilly, the telephone operator who took the call about the Eastland disaster—and whose own brother, Patrick, was among the victims.
  • Enoch Moberg, a deep-sea diver from Evanston who pulled more than 60 bodies from the wreckage and yet remains mostly unrecognized today.
  • Olive Carruthers herself, a poet and author whose beautiful, human-centered storytelling reminds us why these names matter.

We also unpack why these stories were forgotten—and how rediscovering them reframes what we know about that tragic day in 1915.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

📞 The call Catherine O’Reilly made—and the call she dreaded to receive.

🤿 The incredible heroism of Enoch Moberg, a city diver who worked nonstop in pitch-black waters to retrieve the lost.

✍️ The literary legacy of Olive Carruthers, who wrote with clarity, compassion, and historical insight.

🕵️‍♀️ Why so many Eastland stories remain sidelined —and what it takes to bring them back.

Resources:

  • Carruthers, Olive. “How Evanstonians Assisted in the Eastland Disaster.” The Evanston Review, October 23, 1952. In Evanston’s First 100 Years.
  • The Piper City Journal, December 20, 1917. “Diver Works in Bitter Cold.” A piece that references Enoch Moberg’s service as a diver for Evanston, including his role in the Eastland Disaster.
  • “From Ashes to Action” (about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911) and the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition.  Fill to Capacity Podcast (host, Pat Benincasa)
  • Threads of Tragedy: The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and the Eastland Disaster. (Flower in the River Podcast)
  • Additional music in this episode sourced from Pixabay Music.


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. Hello, this is Natalie, and welcome to episode 121 of Flower in the River. And yes, we are doing a weekly retrospective from now until July 24th, to talk about some of the people that never made it into the records of any Eastland books, eastland websites, writings about the Eastland. These people have waited long enough. I'm not sure why they've been excluded all these years, but I see my job as an independent researcher is to restore these people and their stories to their rightful place in the history of the Eastland disaster, and so this week, I fully intended to share a couple of stories with you, stories that I've shared previously, but they'd only been shared once, and that was in my own podcast. I know, but on the way to doing this research, I stumbled over an article that blew me away Just when I think I can't be surprised by anything else that's been left out, I find something brand new. This article is from the October 1952 issue of a publication called the Evanston Review. And Evanston is a suburb of Chicago and it's just north of the city along Lake Michigan and it's known for being home to Northwestern University. But I didn't know of its history with the Eastland disaster until I saw this article. Please keep in mind that, with one exception, none of the people profiled in this article appear in any Eastland book, any Eastland website, any academic papers that I could locate about the Eastland disaster. And yet this is an extraordinary article written by an author, book editor and book critic. Her name was Olive Carruthers. The following article is from the Evanston Review, thursday October 23, 1952. It's under the heading of Interesting Events of Evanston's First 100 Years. Title how Evanstonians Assisted in the Eastland Disaster by Olive Carruthers. One Evanston life was lost, another townsman performed service of heroic and almost superhuman magnitude, and the city showed its traditional generosity in a disaster which shocked the nation back in 1915.

Natalie Zett:

Early in the morning of Saturday, july 24th, the big pleasure boat Eastland lay at mooring in the Chicago River between Clark and LaSalle streets. She was one of four boats which had been chartered by the Western Electric Company for the fifth annual picnic of its employees around the lake in Michigan City. The Eastland was the largest and finest of them all. 3,000 people had gone aboard and the boat was ready to cast off. Suddenly, at a few minutes before 8, without warning, the boat tipped over into the river. Before the passengers could move or realize what was happening, those on the upper decks were hurled into the muddy water. Those who were below never had a chance. They were trapped like rats In minutes. The boat was nothing but a floating beer was nothing but a floating beer. I need to interrupt just for a second. A beer, b-i-e-r in this context, is a platform or a frame used to carry a coffin or a corpse, especially during a funeral procession. The ship, overturned and sitting half-submerged in the river, wasn't just a wrecked vessel, it had become a literal platform for the dead, a funeral procession on water. Now back to the reading of the article. A horrified crowd on the banks sent in a fire alarm and all the stations in the city responded. Ambulances armed with pull motors and filled with doctors and nurses arrived. The Coast Guard sped to the scene along with fire tugs and crews of other boats on the river. Police and firemen manned the small boats and threw lifebuoys into the river. Firemen chopped holes into the bowels of the Eastland to release the trapped passengers. They worked madly furiously Out in Evanston.

Natalie Zett:

One of the first persons to hear of the disaster was Catherine O'Reilly, who worked for the telephone company. She passed the word on to city officials and police chief Fred Schaefer, fire marshal A N Hofstetter and James Lee, city editor of the News Index, rushed into the city in a police car with a pull motor to help in the rescue work. They had their pull motor at work on the scene within 50 minutes of the time. They left Evanston. As soon as Ms O'Reilly had passed on the message to the Evanston authorities, she turned her post over to someone else and, with the chief clerk and head telephone operator, took a train for the city For her brother, patrick O'Reilly had gone to Chicago the night before to attend the picnic.

Natalie Zett:

He had been employed by the Western Electric Company sometime before, had lost his job and was now working for the greenhouse at Calvary Cemetery. Old friends among Western Electric employees had invited him to go along on the outing. Fear Others Are Aboard. It was feared that other Evanstonians were aboard. Edward Walder, son-in-law of Charles T Bartlett, was an executive in charge of a department at the electric plant. He had gone across the lake in advance to arrange the grounds for the picnic, expecting his wife and children to come along on the excursion boat. Miss Ruth Madison, 815 Chicago Avenue, had gone in early Saturday morning to join the excursion. Miss June Woods, manager of the Girls League, had gone on her vacation July 18th giving the Western Electric Company as her vacation address. Friends feared that she might be aboard. Another Evanstonian was involved. Rivers McNeil, collector of the Port of Chicago, took charge of the rescuing.

Natalie Zett:

When the rescue work in Chicago had got underway and it became apparent that many passengers an estimated 1,000, were trapped and drowned in the bowels of the boat, cc Saner of the Chicago Engineering Department, former assistant commissioner of public works in Evanston, remembered Enoch Moberg's diving City Diver 20 Years. Enoch Moberg, police sergeant on the Evanston force, had been diving for the city for nearly 20 years. He had charge of the water intakes from the lake, his duties being to keep the intakes clear of anchor ice and in repair. Saner drove out to Evanston Saturday morning as fast as a good car would take him, got the consent of the chief to borrow Moberg and had Waterworks engineer Charles Lapp released from duty to help. They loaded in Moberg's diving suit and were back in the city in an hour. The diver went to work immediately.

Natalie Zett:

His own story, given to the press at the time, is more graphic than any present rewrite could be. He told the reporter we got to work at one o'clock Saturday afternoon and in two hours and twenty minutes I had found and started from the water two score bodies. It was an awful experience, but so big that I forgot I had any nerves and was handling them mechanically as if I had been treating something that never had any life in it. Gropes Way in Boat Quote. I had no trouble with my air Charlie Lapp always attends to that, all right but I found it very hard to get down the fireman's ladders which had been placed there and to explore the upside-down cabins. The decks were straight up and down like walls and it was utterly dark. So I had to grope my way foot by foot among the topsy-turvy furniture feeling for bodies. It was hard work but I did not feel unusually tired. The strain was too great for that.

Natalie Zett:

He went down first to the forward end to the east, going through a hole cut in the side of the boat, and was let down into the salon deck where he found four bodies. He got the bodies out from whatever was holding them, attached cords to the wrists, and the bodies were pulled up to a platform which had been thrown across one end of the hulk. From there they were taken ashore. He found a pile of bodies in the afterquarter of the same deck, wedged into a pocket about eight feet square in what was evidently a stairway to the upper deck. He figured all the people had rushed together in a frantic effort to reach the stairway when the boat turned over and they were wedged in. Getz 25 Bodies. He took 25 bodies out of this pocket. In another part of the cabin he found a woman's body and those of her two children, one about four years old and the other less than two. The baby was under a table with broken dishes and glass piled all around.

Natalie Zett:

Enoch Moberg worked all afternoon and took out between 55 and 60 bodies. Sunday morning he started again at 7 and worked until 1130. I can stay under seven hours if necessary, he said, but usually do it in two-hour stretches. I heard he continued that one of the divers went crazy and died later, but I did not have time to notice what the others were doing. Five besides myself were diving nearly all Scandinavians who take to diving work. All afternoon Sunday I was working outside the boat, between it and the dock. I found no bodies there. I searched the bottom of the river, along the piles and foundations very thoroughly. When the boat tipped, all persons thrown overboard fell toward the center of the river and I understand that the other divers working there found a number of bodies. Those who were rescued alive were among the upper deck passengers who were catapulted into the water. Mr Moberg put in nearly two full days in the rescue work, stopping hardly long enough for fresh air and food. He pulled out three more than three score bodies of the drowned victims. So before we continue with the rest of this article, I want to pause and talk about what the author meant. That Moberg pulled out three more than three score bodies of the drowned victims. That's very poetic and probably the type of phrasing that was used over 70 years ago. But when we hear that now, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, at least for me, and I looked it up and what this meant, according to at least two resources, is that Enoch Moberg pulled out more than 60 bodies. That is Herculean as far as I'm concerned, the fact that he was working so quickly and he accomplished so much, and he definitely deserves recognition. We'll continue with the rest of the article. With the rest of the article Mother and Children Safe.

Natalie Zett:

Evanston soon learned the whereabouts of the people who were thought to have been on the excursion boat. Mrs Walder and the children were safe. They had not gone on the trip at all but had come to her father's home in Evanston on Saturday night Ruth Madison had a remarkable escape. She had boarded the Eastland but as soon as she got on a police officer came along and ordered 50 passengers off, saying that the boat was overloaded and not safe. It turned over just a few minutes after Miss Madison got to land. Sometime during the day on Saturday, june Woods telephoned that she was safe.

Natalie Zett:

Tom Connell, 1926 Jackson Avenue, told how losing a job saved his life. He had applied for work as a kitchen helper on the Eastland. He was told to go on the boat and if the regular man did not show up he could have the job. But the man did come and Tom walked off the boat just 15 minutes before it turned over. Only Patrick O'Reilly, 20 years old, was lost. When his sister Catherine and her friends arrived at the river the crowd was so dense that the police wouldn't let her through. So they went to the information bureau at 214 North Clark Street and waited an hour and a half only to learn that Pat had not been listed there. They went back to the boat but still could not get through the crowd.

Natalie Zett:

At an emergency station of the telephone company in Chicago, catherine got in touch with friends and learned that her brother's body had been found and taken to 328 West Chicago Avenue. There it was identified and taken to Ahern's Funeral Parlor on Kedzie Avenue, unprepared for Loss. The loss found Catherine totally unprepared financially. She was only 22 years old herself and had come to the United States from Ireland only a few years before. She had found employment first in the home of WM Caldwell. After she went to work for the telephone company, she stayed on in the Caldwell home, earning her board and room. In her spare time A younger sister worked in the household of Mrs BD Cole, while an older one, molly, had married an Englishman and lived near Decatur. All the sisters were sending every cent they could spare home to the folks in the old country where, besides their parents, there were seven more children all under the age of 15. The brother, patrick, had roomed alone at 1318 Elmwood Avenue Whatever savings he had had been used up during his unemployment.

Natalie Zett:

Monday after the disaster, the board of directors of the Evanston Commercial Association met and voted to ask the Chicago Association what they could do to help. George Kearney called attention to the plight of Catherine O'Reilly and it was decided to offer her help first, at least to the extent of the funeral expenses. The Elks wired the mayor of Chicago their offer of assistance as well as the Evanston Commercial Association. Evanstonians on the Chicago Special Relief Commission included James A Patton, d R Forgan, e J Buffington, w A Gardner and Northwestern University's president Abram W Harris. Evanston Banks Help. All the Evanston Banks aided through the Chicago Clearinghouse which subscribed $20,000 toward relief of families of victims. Two Children thousand toward relief of families of victims. Two children, marion and Harold McNeil. 921 Davis Street, wanted so much to help that on Friday evening after the disaster they sold flowers on the street until the police stopped them for lack of a permit. They had collected $1.80, and they sent it to the relief fund which the Chicago Examiner was raising.

Natalie Zett:

Enoch Moberg, who retired in 1925 after 28 years of service for the city and now lives at 1426 Elmwood Avenue, remembers the disaster as though it had happened yesterday. It was harder work moving the furniture and wreckage than bringing out the bodies. He said of the great service he rendered. What you just heard was an article by Olive Carruthers, and she is a fascinating character in her own right and we will talk about her. But here's the thing Olive Carruthers' article has not been included in any books, websites or other documentation about the Eastland disaster in recent years at least anything that I could find, and it belongs there. It needs to be part of that history. The article stands out as further evidence of how much has been left out due to the lack of rigorous, sustained research over time.

Natalie Zett:

When it comes to the people who were affected by the Eastland disaster, the ship in and of itself has been very well documented, but the people whoently did was show us the power of the fan club, and that would be the friends or family, associates and neighbors. This is a concept championed by genealogist Elizabeth Schoen Mills, instead of considering the person as just a name, date of birth and date of death, we have to think about who their family was, who were their friends, who were their associates and who were their neighbors. All of these interactions give us a broader picture of who the person was. And when we depart this life, we leave evidence behind, and that evidence gives those who survive us a more complete picture of who we were in this life. So the Eastland disaster is an excellent example of this.

Natalie Zett:

This is a case where thousands of working-class people, many of whom were immigrants or first-generation immigrants. They were affected, but in the retelling the stories are limited. If they're told at all, they're usually reduced to just the name, age, date of death and where they're buried, and very few biographies to go with that. But when you hear a story like the one you just heard by Olive Carruthers, she pulls you in. She talked about these characters, how they were related to each other, what happened to them, how they intersected in some cases, and Carruthers' writing reminds us that respectful storytelling is not about checking boxes, it's about restoring presence. That said, let's talk about some of the people who you were just introduced to Catherine O'Reilly and her brother, patrick O'Reilly. We first meet Catherine O'Reilly, who was a telephone operator when she relayed the urgent news to city officials about the Eastland disaster and sadly we learn that her brother, patrick, was one of the Eastland victims. As for Catherine O'Reilly, we learned that the community stepped forth and tried to help her and her extended family.

Natalie Zett:

As I was searching for Catherine online, I found her Declaration of Intention. A Declaration of Intention is sometimes called First Paper or First Papers, and this was the first legal step for an immigrant who wanted to become a naturalized citizen. The date was January 30, 1942 on this document and her full name was Catherine O'Reilly, but she also had another name, sister Mary Mida or Mida. That would be M-I-D-A. She was a Roman Catholic sister and at that time she was living at 845 North Van Buren Street in Milwaukee, wisconsin. At that time it was called St John Cathedral Convent and she was 47 years old when she applied for citizenship. She stated that her last foreign residence was Glynn County, limerick, ireland, and she immigrated to the United States from Queenstown, cork, ireland. She was in Philadelphia initially and then ended up in Chicago. Catherine O'Reilly sister Mary Meada died in 1966.

Natalie Zett:

Our next person is Rivers McNeill, the collector of the Port of Chicago, and Rivers took charge of the rescue. I thought Rivers McNeil would also make a great character for a novel, but this was a real person and I didn't know what collector of the Port of Chicago meant and learned that this was not a ceremonial title. So in 1915, rivers McNeil held one of the most powerful federal posts in the region as collector of the Port of Chicago. In that position he oversaw all customs activity, maritime oversight systems activity, maritime oversight, import duties and dockside enforcement across one of the busiest inland ports in America. It was a job that came with federal reach, personnel and decision-making power, and on the morning of January 24, 1915, it also came with responsibility that he could not ignore. According to this article, mcneil took charge and he was very similar in that respect to Coroner Hoffman.

Natalie Zett:

This article is another example of how incomplete the history of the Eastland disaster or I should say the people of the Eastland disaster actually is. Yet it's also the proof of something wonderful the truth is still out there, waiting in newspaper clippings, family memories, municipal archives and even insurance records. Finally, we have Enoch Moberg, the diver who assisted in the recovery efforts. I want to read another article about Enoch from the Piper City Journal, december 20, 1917. This is a couple years after the Eastland disaster.

Natalie Zett:

Diver works in bitter cold. Attacks of anchor ice at the intake of the city waterworks at the foot of Lincoln Street have afforded some busy days for Sergeant Enoch Moberg of the local police, who is also the official city diver. Moberg has worked at the intake offshore at Lincoln Street during the past few weeks whenever the weather has permitted the floating of the diver's raft. The weather has permitted but a few days of actual work, but the condition of the intake is very good, according to the sergeant, and no alarm is felt concerning cutting off the city's water supply. As an aside, enoch Moberg's work during the Eastland and in 1917 was literally a matter of life and death because if the water supply was cut off to Chicago there would have been big problems. We'll continue with the article. A marked feature in connection with the diving this year, moberg says, is the extremely cold water. In previous years he recalls the rope which would freeze stiff on the raft always thawed when under the surface of the water. This year, he says, the rope became a mass of ice when several feet under the surface.

Natalie Zett:

Moberg is one of the few expert divers in the vicinity of Chicago. Expert divers in the vicinity of Chicago. He won distinction for his rescue work at the Eastland disaster in the Chicago River in July 1915. He was presented a medal for his untiring services at the scene of the catastrophe. That provides even more evidence that Moberg's involvement in rescue work with the Eastland disaster wasn't just published in 1952. It was published in other newspaper accounts during that time, including this one from 1917. This one from 1917.

Natalie Zett:

So Enoch Moberg was born in Sweden in 1874, and he built a remarkable life in his adopted home of Evanston, illinois. A skilled deep-sea diver and longtime member of the Evanston Police Department, moberg served as the city's official diver, often working in punishing conditions, including clearing anchor ice during brutal Midwest winters to protect the city's water intake system. And as we know now, one of his most extraordinary feats came on July 24, 1915, and Moberg, without fanfare, was one of the first divers to descend into the wreckage. He worked tirelessly, recovering victims' bodies from submerged decks and helping bring closure to grieving families. For that harrowing work he was awarded a medal for untiring services at the scene of the catastrophe.

Natalie Zett:

So why is Enoch Moberg ignored in modern accounts? Let me share a story of someone else who claimed to be a diver and hero of the Eastland disaster, arthur Loeb. I featured his story last June 2024, and it's so over the top that I still can't believe it. So back when I began widening my research on the people of the Eastland disaster, I kept seeing Arthur Loeb's name pop up and I thought who is this guy?

Natalie Zett:

Arthur Loeb built an entire identity around being a so-called hero of the Eastland disaster, but the truth is he was a consummate con artist, a confidence man as they used to call them. He falsely claimed to be a professional diver who rescued dozens of people from the Eastland. Here's what is true. According to newspaper accounts and other records, arthur Loeb was arrested for looting corpses of the Eastland victims at the 2nd Regiment Armory. He was acquitted of that, but he continued on his merry journey through life. Shortly after, he launched a national lecture and vaudeville tour retelling a completely fabricated version of events. He claimed to have received a medal from the Carnegie Hero Fund until the Carnegie Commission itself publicly denounced him in a 1916 newspaper article, stating that he never received any recognition from them and that no Carnegie medals were quote-unquote set with diamonds, as Loeb had falsely claimed. Do you think that stopped him? It didn't. That's the thing with these interesting people. They seem to have no conscience and they go through life like this while the rest of us are appalled. I found all sorts of records about Arthur Loeb Newspaper records trail. He deceived a lot of people because back in the day we're talking 1915, through the mid-1930s it was sometimes difficult to cross-check.

Natalie Zett:

Before we go too far, let's talk about the term con man or con artist. It is short for confidence man and the term has a very colorful history, much like Arthur Loeb's elaborate fakery. The term confidence man was first recorded in 1849 in New York City. There was a guy called William Thompson, a smooth-talking swindler who dressed well and approached strangers acting as if he knew them. After chatting a bit, he'd ask a bit. He'd ask have you confidence in me to lend me your watch until tomorrow? Back then watch lending was a big deal. By the way. Of course William Thompson would vanish with the watch. Newspapers at the time dubbed him the confidence man and the term caught on, especially in crime reporting. Mark Twain and Herman Melville wrote about Confidence Men. Over time the name got shortened to con man and con artist and it fit Arthur Loeb perfectly.

Natalie Zett:

Loeb didn't just lie, he cultivated trust, he told convincing stories, posed as a heroic diver and falsely claimed awards like the Carnegie Medal he never got. In summary, arthur Loeb was born in Chicago in 1895, and he died in Las Vegas on April 8, 1964. Specifically, according to his certificate of death, he died in the gift shop at the Stardust Hotel and his occupation was listed as salesman. The kind of business or industry he worked in ladies' general merchandise. That's Arthur Loeb. What's astonishing about Arthur Loeb is that even today he's still being mentioned as a hero in certain Eastland books and on certain Eastland websites. And as for the heroic diver Enoch Moberg, who was an actual hero of the Eastland, his accomplishments mostly ignored the silence around. Enoch says a lot and it's time to honor him. And it also looks as if he had a number of children, and maybe one of his descendants will hear this story and know who their ancestor was and how incredibly skilled, brave and courageous he was. Last but not least is the enigmatic Olive Carruthers. Last but not least is the enigmatic Olive Carruthers.

Natalie Zett:

She had quite the career and probably wore a few more creative hats as well. She published two books. One was titled Lincoln's Other, mary, released in 1946. It focused on Mary S Owens Vineyard 1808 to 1877, who had a romantic relationship with Abraham Lincoln before he married Mary Todd. The book had several editions, including a limited New Salem edition of just 250 numbered and signed copies a collector's item. Today you can still find the digital version on the Internet Archive. Her second book, we'll Sing One Song, was inspired by her husband's experiences growing up in Kentucky, navigating a world shaped by racial tension and complex relationships.

Natalie Zett:

As far as I can tell, she didn't publish any additional books, but for a time she had notable connections to Chicago's literary scene. Most significantly, she wrote a tribute poem titled Farewell to a Troubadour dedicated to Carl Sandburg. It appeared in a 1953 commemorative edition marking his 75th birthday commemorative edition marking his 75th birthday. In that publication she was described as having been a student of Sandberg's poetry for a quarter century Now. Based on her visibility at that time, you'd think finding her obituary would have been easy. But no, olive made me work a little. Still, I found her and I want to share what I found with you. Her obituary appeared in the Janesville Weekly Gazette, that's Janesville, wisconsin, on Thursday September 18, 1969. 1969. Headline Local Author Dead at 63.

Natalie Zett:

Mrs Olive Carruthers, 63, of 120 St Lawrence Avenue, an author of two books, died in Mercy Hospital yesterday at 12.30 pm following a four-month illness. She was born November 13, 1905, in Broadhead, the daughter of Oliver and Nettie Smith Skinner. She graduated from Broadhead High School in 1924 and from Beloit College in 1928. She married William Carruthers in 1938, and he died in 1945. She was employed in Chicago and Evanston, illinois, until six years ago when she moved to Janesville and worked at Norwood Mills. She wrote two books Lincoln's Other Mary and Will Sing One Song, a novel of Kentucky. She was a member of the First Methodist Church of Broadhead. Survivors include two sisters, mrs Violet Selke and Miss Pearl Skinner, both of Janesville. Funeral services will be held Friday at 10.30 am at the United Methodist Church in Orfordville with burial in Maple Grove Cemetery, orfordville. Friends may call tonight at the newcomer funeral home in Broadhead from 7 to 9 pm. Memorials may be made to the Cancer Fund.

Natalie Zett:

So why was Olive so hard to find? Well, she used the pen name Carruthers with a different spelling than her actual married name. That tripped me up and it also tripped up the search engines. But then I found an obscure article about her graduation from Beloit College, which gave me the clues I needed to trace her birth name, family and more. I'm not sure what happened to her in her later years. She doesn't seem to have stayed in the literary spotlight, but she wrote two books, had a poet's eye and, most importantly to me, she penned a truly incredible article about the people of the Eastland disaster. I have much respect for her work. She couldn't have known that when she wrote that article, that someone 70 plus years later would discover it and see it for what it is a treasure chest, and that someone is me and now you. Before we go, I want to recommend a podcast for you. I think you'll enjoy it and here's why I'm recommending this particular podcast.

Natalie Zett:

For a long time I have felt uneasy about the constant comparison between the Eastland disaster and the Titanic. That might have been effective once or twice, but over a long period of time. The Titanic, because it's so iconic it just diminishes anything else in its presence. Sure, they're both ships, but that's all they have in common. As a family member and as somebody who's researched the people of the Eastland fairly intensely for the last couple of years, I've concluded that the Eastland can indeed stand on its own. It doesn't need to be propped up, particularly by an iconic event like the Titanic. That said, the Eastland does have a lot in common with other tragedies that perhaps aren't as well known, and it's time to talk about one of those. That's why last year, I did some additional research and located a different tragedy that shares a lot more with the Eastland demographically and culturally, and that would be the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911, and I bet a lot of people already know about it. Both tragedies involved working-class immigrant families, many of them young women, and both the Eastland and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire were preventable.

Natalie Zett:

Nearly a century later, understandable. Nearly a century later, an organization called Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition emerged. They've educated, organized and created a public memorial etched in steel, grounded in truth and honoring the community, with inscriptions in English, yiddish and Italian. They've shown what it looks like to treat history with care, community and courage, and for a powerful look at what meaningful remembrance can be, I recommend episode 107 of Fill to Capacity with Pat Benincasa. This episode is called From Ashes to Action and features Joel Sosinski and Andy Sosin, founding members of the Triangle Coalition. They don't just revisit what happened. They focus on what was built afterward and what is being built now, in present time.

Natalie Zett:

This is history done right and I'll put a link to this episode in the show notes. And if you want to hear my earlier take on the Triangle Fire, I'll include that link as well. But start with Pat's. Okay, trust me, it's really good. I'll talk to you next week. Thanks again for coming along on this journey with me, on this journey with me. 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.

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