Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

The Sleepyhead Who Dodged Death - Another Untold Eastland Story

• Natalie Zett • Season 4 • Episode 128

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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?

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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 episode 128 of Flower in the River podcast. For the last few episodes, I have been shining a light on Dwight Boyer, a maritime journalist whose writing on the Eastland disaster has either been forgotten or ignored. As I've researched whether others had cited Boyer's chapter, I uncovered yet something else unexpected A blog post from 2011 in Thousand Islands Life magazine. That's an online magazine. It's called the Eastland Disaster and it was written by Rachel Cole and, as far as I can tell, it's never been cross-referenced anywhere else. And I know I say this a lot, but there's a reason. Every time I dig into the people of the Eastland disaster, I keep finding that so much of this history, so many of these stories have been ignored, and I try to remedy that by doing this research and sharing these stories with you, and I think you will enjoy this one. So here is the Eastland Disaster, written by Rachel Cole and posted on November 13, 2011 in Thousand Islands Life magazine. Now, before I read this article, I want to tell you that I am going to read it as it was written, and the way it was written it was faithful to the way that one of the speakers shared information. Grammatically it's not correct, but it's how this person spoke and I'm going to leave it intact, and I want to make sure that my non-English speaking listeners understand that this is what happened. So, whatever translation app you're using, it might get confused, but it's not the translation apps issue. It's how this was written, so just bear with it. It will make sense. Just keep following through until the end. Thank you. Editor's Note.

Natalie Zett:

Frank Cole, longtime resident of Murray Isle, was a friend to many and a father who loved to share his memories with his family. This story is just one of many. Frank died in his Murray Isle cottage on October 21, 2005. Frank served both Murray Isle as well as the whole river community, as he was a board member of the Save the River and a founding trustee, and then emeritus trustee of the Thousand Islands Land Trust. We are grateful to Rachel Cole for sharing this story with TI Life.

Natalie Zett:

Frank Cole had two birth certificates, as he was born on the cusp of Montclair and Glen Ridge, new Jersey, he lived a colorful life. In college he and a friend traveled the length from the Hudson River through the Mohawk and the Seneca Rivers to the St Lawrence ina 14-foot outboard. The two had to stop every hour to refuel. This was Frank's first introduction to the river and the start of his lifelong love of Beverly Runyon of Murray Isle. Frank and Bev were married for over 50 years and had three children. He played on undefeated football teams at both Morristown Prep School and St Lawrence University. He was a lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, a sales manager for Marchant Machines, and he became a certified teacher, helping many achieve their GEDs. Frank was always involved with his church, giving freely of his talents to his communities, and sat on several boards, including the Thousand Islands Land Trust and Save the River. He cherished family and greeted others as friends. He was a storyteller, a listener and a peacemaker. He had a severe stroke in 1999 that never broke his spirit. He died on Murray at the exact age and date of his father's death.

Natalie Zett:

This is definitely my father's voice and the story does not vary from the oral versions he shared with us. He enjoyed telling tales and wrote out several memoirs. This is one of the better Headline the Eastland Disaster by Frank Cole. I did not hear the following eyewitness account of this tragic accident from my own dad, but only learned of it by accident from a good friend and neighbor who lived across the street from us in New Jersey. This neighbor, named Jake Fry, had gone to Cornell with my dad. In fact, both Jake and my dad, ira Cole, had graduated together in 1915 and had both been hired by the Western Electric Company at their Hawthorne Works plant in Chicago for their first job. Right out of college. After I was married and home seeing my folks, I would often go over and visit Mr Fry, who had lost his wife to cancer. His wife had been the kind to send me cookies etc. When I was away at college or in the Marine Corps, even though she had two sons of her own. It was during one of these visits that Jake said to me "'Did I ever tell you how I saved your daddy's life'. Of course I said no, you never did. And this is how his first-person account went. Jake's story.

Natalie Zett:

Right out of college, your dad, a feller named Jess Wentz, and myself all lived in a boarding house in Chicago near the train station and handy to get to work at the Hawthorne Works. Well, they were always pestering me about being late and making them late because I was a hard sleeper. We hadn't really worked for very long in our new jobs, what with our training period and all, and we were all real excited about the company picnic coming up. We had great expectations about the chance to meet some of the girls that we had not even dared to smile at on our new jobs during working hours. Remember, we were bachelors at the time and we had really been keeping our noses to the grindstone. Our social calendars were absolutely blank and we were exhausted at the end of each day with everything so new.

Natalie Zett:

On the morning of the picnic, ira and Jess had come into my room so they say and had waked me up. They went down for coffee and when I didn't come down, they came back up to the room and found me asleep. They were madder than a wet hen, even though I'm sure they never had waked me up fully the first time. I was mad at the rude way they had jerked me out of bed. They threatened to go without me, but they did wait for me.

Natalie Zett:

As we got to the train station the train was pulling out. Neither Ira nor Jess would even talk to me while we waited for the next train. All the way to the docks where we were to get on the excursion boat, they chatted with each other but never a word to me. We made our way toward the entrance through the crowd. There seemed to be a big argument up front and just as we got about ten feet from the man taking tickets, they suddenly threw a chain across and said the boat was full and we would have to go on another hastily arranged annex boat over at a different wharf. It was supposed to travel closely enough to the other boat so that we would be able to hear the band on the first boat. Now the guys were really upset with me, but we tried to push through the crowd to get to the other boat. We had to cross a bridge to get to the other wharf and we could barely make way through the press of people. We were only part way across the bridge when we heard shouts and screams from the direction of the excursion boat.

Natalie Zett:

To our horror, we watched the Eastland, which had started away from the dock, simply lean farther and farther over until it capsized. It was like slow motion. We could not believe our own eyes. It was awful to see Some had jumped too soon and it rolled on some of these as they struggled in the water. Others were hanging on, loosing their grips, slipping and sliding. Some scrambled to the high side and somehow ended up standing on the side of the ship. Everyone was screaming and calling to his companion. All of us on the bridge just stood frozen in the horror of what we were seeing. The total confusion and disbelief of this thing just kept us rooted on the spot.

Natalie Zett:

We spent the rest of the day and into the night watching the rescue efforts, as rescue workers tried to cut through the side of the hall to get some trap below. We tried to see if there was anything to do, but rescue workers were being hampered by grief-stricken friends and relatives trying to locate loved ones. The anguish and despair of those who knew friends or family who surely had been lost was all around us. We stayed until way after dark before starting home. On the way home, one poor soul who had lost his whole family, went mad and started to bang his head against the train window. Men grabbed him and even so he succeeded in pulling chunks of hair out of his head until he bled. Several big men subdued him at the next station until police could handcuff him and take him away. The sight of that man's complete despair was an awful experience.

Natalie Zett:

When we got home we just sat and talked of what we had seen. None of us could sleep at all. We stayed up all night and the next day we went to church without sleep. That's the first time we had done that. We were still in shock. I noticed the guys were talking to me now and I reminded them about how they had been so mean to me, about making them late, probably saving their lives. They never even answered me. No apology, no nothing. Imagine such ingratitude Epilogue.

Natalie Zett:

Several times after hearing that story, I tried to get my dad to elaborate on the events he had witnessed that day, but it was obviously very painful for him to recall and discuss. By pressing with questions, I was able to verify all that Jake had told me and assured myself that Jake had not exaggerated the event. Many years later, after both dad and mom had passed away. I found a ticket among my dad's things that he had saved from that awful day. There is a marvelous account of this disaster in a book by Dwight Boyer called True Tales of the Great Lakes. The story is entitled who Speaks for the Little Feller? There are some good pictures in this account and an interesting story of how the famous Clarence Darrow defended Captain Pedersen, the skipper of the Eastland. Among my dad's things I also found some old postcards of this disaster, copies of these and the ticket I enclose with this account.

Natalie Zett:

And a side note the Hawthorne plant was the subject of a famous study wherein girls on a production line were asked what improvements would speed up production. New lights was one of the suggestions. It was done and production went up. Then other slight changes were made and each time production went up. Finally, the time study men put everything back as it was originally. Again production went up. It was found that the attention the workers were getting, that was the dynamic causing the increase in production. This is now referred to as the Hawthorne effect in psychology courses.

Natalie Zett:

This was written by Frank Cole, murray Isle and was submitted by his daughter, rachel Cole, and in case you were wondering, murray Isle, which was mentioned in this article. It's in Jefferson County, new York. Now, this article may be short, but wow, it's packed. I stumbled on it while digging into Dwight Boyer's Crew Tales of the Great Lakes and, sure enough, it led me to this 2011 blog that not only mentions Boyer's Eastland chapter who Speaks for the Little Feller but it also gave us something extra another firsthand account of the Eastland disaster. What happened here is that it was a story within a story, so the author, rachel Cole, shares her father Frank's memory, which came from his father's friend, jake Fry. So there we have it Jake, ira Cole and Jess Wentz, fresh college grads from Cornell. They're working their first job at Western Electric, living through the Eastland disaster in real time. They saw it and thanks to Jake, who was willing to talk, we have this rare eyewitness account not only of the disaster itself, but of the scramble afterward and the silence that lingered for years. How about some backstory for these men? Actually, I was able to find biographies or biographical information for two out of the three, and I think you will find it interesting, as I did so. Really, the main focus of this article is Ira Earle Cole, and he, of course, was the grandfather of the author, and here's what I learned about him. Actually, he was quite prestigious but also an incredibly involved giving person, according to his various biographies, new series, volume 40, edited by Edward N Dodge, west Palm Beach, florida, american Historical Society, 1970, available on familysearchorg. Here's a synopsis Ira Earl Cole was born in 1892 in Syracuse, new York, and by 1915, as we learned, he was freshly out of Cornell with a degree in mechanical engineering and certification in electrical engineering.

Natalie Zett:

He was ready to start his career, and that summer he landed a position with a couple of his friends as a student engineer with Western Electric in Cicero, illinois, and like thousands of others, he was planning to head to the big company picnic on the Eastland Excursion Steamer. Ira and his Cornell friends were running late, too late, late, too late. So instead of boarding, they arrived just in time to see the Eastland roll over in the Chicago River. Hundreds of their fellow employees, many with families in tow, were trapped and drowned before their eyes, and yet Ira seldom, if ever, spoke of that morning again. His silence seemed to be absolute, and the only reason that we know that he was even there is because one of his fellow Cornell grads and that would be. Jake Fry later told the story to Ira's son, frank Cole. The memory survived, not through Ira himself but through the words of a friend who stood beside him.

Natalie Zett:

After that summer Ira poured his energy into his work. He left Chicago and joined research on submarine detection during World War I and over the next four decades he built a reputation as a pioneering electrical engineer. How about that? Eventually, electrical engineer how about that? Eventually he became a senior design engineer with Lockhead Electronics in New Jersey. But Ira was always more than his career. In Montclair, new Jersey, ira became a civic leader, serving as a deputy police captain supporting scholarships, deputy police captain, supporting scholarships, chairing community committees and mentoring young engineers. He and his wife, anna Catherine Henerman, raised three children. Outside of work he devoted himself to genealogy, photography, travel and the quiet pursuits that filled his days. I recall died October 21st 1968, and he was remembered as a pioneering engineer and a community man. But that morning in Chicago in 1915 remained largely unspoken, a silent threat in his life, carried forward only by the one who knew what they had seen.

Natalie Zett:

So let's move on to Jake Fry. And yes, the same Jake Fry that is our sleepyhead. I had a bit of a challenge with Jake. There are a lot of people named Jake Fry who were born around the same time that I surmised he was born and I went to Cornell University's yearbooks and fortunately they did have a yearbook from 1915 when both Jake and Ira were students and graduated.

Natalie Zett:

So I found out Jake's full name and that helped, because it's quite unique. His full name is Jacob Ruth R-U-T-H. Yes, like the girl's first name, ruth R-U-T-H. Yes, like the girl's first name, fry F-R-Y. And I found out later that Ruth was his mother's maiden name, birth name. So that's why they made that choice.

Natalie Zett:

It's unusual to make that choice for a man. I've never run into it. But here you go. That's what I like about genealogy as well. You can't have a very closed mindset when you're doing this kind of work, because you run into things like this all the time. It's actually quite interesting.

Natalie Zett:

Jacob Ruth Fry was born on the 20th of April 1891 in Lancaster County, pennsylvania, and he died in May of 1976 at Shawnee Mission, kansas. I will read his obituary. His obituary is from the May 13, 1976 Intelligencer Journal. Headline Jacob Fry, retired Bell engineer, dies.

Natalie Zett:

Jacob Ruth Fry, an 85-year-old retired research chief for Bell Telephone Laboratories and a native of Lancaster County, died unexpectedly Tuesday afternoon in Kansas. He died at the home of his son, john Jacob Fry, in Prairie Village, kansas, where he had lived for the past three years. Fry had been employed for 40 years, first as an engineer and later as chief of research with Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York, formerly Western Electric. So Western Electric was also in New York City at one point. He retired in 1955 and was retained as a consultant to the laboratories. A longtime resident of Montclair, new Jersey, fry was responsible for the development of the relay system, which made possible long-distance direct dialing. Can you believe that? That's incredible. He was born in Frysville, lancaster County, a son of the late Jacob M and Margaret Ruth Fry. He was a graduate of Ephrata High School, class of 1907, and Cornell University School of Engineering, class of 1915. He was the husband of the late Margaret Heisley Fry, surviving our two sons, john J Fry, with whom he resided, and Robert B Fry, wheaton Illinois, five grandchildren and a brother, miles W Fry. So that's Jacob's obituary.

Natalie Zett:

At this point I was unable to locate anything for anybody close to the name of Jess Wentz, who is the third person mentioned in this article. But since I'm at the beginning of my research. Hang in there. If I get more information about him, I will definitely share it on my website and in the podcast. As I step back and think about all three of these men although I don't know about Jess Wentz, I'm sure that he too, like Ira and like Jake, contributed mightily to technology. They contributed to their communities, they had families, they have descendants. They contributed to their communities, they had families, they have descendants. And had they arrived on time and gotten on the Eastland there's and they get to see what would have happened had George not been here. So had Jacob not been here, had Ira not been here, had Jess not been here, a lot of things wouldn't have happened. So, directly or indirectly, we benefit because they were once here.

Natalie Zett:

Here's what surprises me about this blog post it was published in 2011, and right now it's 2025. This is an awesome and incredible first-person eyewitness account that somehow seemed to have gotten lost. And, as a bonus, they mention Dwight Boyer's book and the chapter who Speaks for the Little Fellers. So it was known in 2011. Not sure why that, too, was not moved forward in time. Not sure why that, too, was not moved forward in time, and I hope that you will take a look at this article in its original format and especially take a look at the comments, because they too are interesting. I'll leave a link in the show notes, of course. So, yes, indeed, there will be more stories next week, because there's no shortage of those.

Natalie Zett:

In the meantime, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and thank you for coming along on this journey. Hey, that's it for this episode and thanks for coming along for the ride. Please subscribe or follow so you can keep up 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.

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