Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

Capsized. Kicked. Survived.

• Natalie Zett • Season 4 • Episode 141

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A photographer’s byline led me straight into another long-overlooked Eastland story — the 1965 Chicago Tribune interview with survivor Anna Meinert, one of the many accounts from this event that were well documented but seldom researched and carried forward.

Anna’s memories bring the morning of July 24, 1915 into sharp, human focus.

Fifty years later she could still see it all: water seeping from portholes, the sudden lurch, the scrap of canvas above a window, a stranger’s boot kicking her away, and the two other strangers whose hands pulled her to safety. Her friends never made it off the ship. That contrast — a precise memory set against an incomprehensible toll — reframes the Eastland Disaster that claimed more than 800 lives.

From there, we widen the lens. Anna’s account intersects with the larger story: ballast decisions, the court ruling that declared the Eastland “seaworthy,” and the ship’s second life as a Navy training vessel on the Great Lakes before being scrapped after World War II. 

Then the trail moves into the realm of records. Through baptismal entries, census pages, and obituary lines, we confirm that she was born Alma Augusta Johanna Meinert to Prussian immigrants, married a Grimmer, raised a daughter, and later settled in Baton Rouge. Her obituary makes no mention of the disaster — a reminder of how easily family memory can disconnect from the events that shaped it.

And this entire journey is only possible because of the Eastland Memorial Society, whose meticulous early work created a template for how history should be preserved: clearly, respectfully, and without turning real lives into marketing material. Though the organization is gone, its archived website on the Wayback Machine continues to guide research like this — proof that good historical work keeps paying forward.

That’s the lesson in Anna’s story: when we connect photographs, survivor interviews, and genealogy, we return people to history and history to families.

Take a moment to get to know Anna Meinert Grimmer. She’s been waiting a long time.

Resources:

Fitzpatrick, Thomas. “Horror of Eastland Haunts Memory of Survivor.” Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1965.

Lane, Russell. “812 Died Half Century Ago: Suddenly the Boat Lurched.” Jacksonville Courier (Jacksonville, Illinois), July 23, 1965.

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 141 of Flower in the River Podcast, and I hope you're doing well. This week we are returning to the Eastland Memorial Society website, sadly, no longer in existence. However, they were so thorough and conscientious in their documentation efforts that these pages, almost 30 years later, are still incredibly useful. And I want to keep bringing that up because I want other researchers to be aware of this resource. It is so invaluable. So they had a page that I thought I would feature on this podcast episode. It was all about the various photographers who were involved in the Eastland disaster. I will share that story in a future episode, but there was a page devoted to it, and it was a reprint of an article from 1955, and I decided to research one of the photographers, Fred Eckhart, to see if I could get more information about him before, during, and after the Eastland disaster. I think he was a photographer mainly for the Chicago Tribune, but he probably did other work as well. Well, a funny thing happened while researching Fred. I found an iconic photograph of his, and the photograph was featured in an article which was an interview with a survivor of the Eastland disaster. What's astonishing about this find is that this is yet another long lost story of one of the people of the Eastland disaster. So let's get to it. I don't want you to wait any longer to hear this story. Chicago Tribune Sunday, july eleventh, nineteen sixty-five. She nearly drowned as boat sank by Thomas Fitzpatrick. There are moments of horror so stark they become seared into the victim's mind for a lifetime. They never fade these memories, but they never become muted. Instead, they lurk in the background, waiting for the quiet moment when they can pounce unexpectedly before the mind's eye once again. Mrs. Anna Grimmer, seventy of nine zero one Wesley Avenue, Oak Park, has been enduring such a recurring vision for fifty years. Sometimes it comes in the late hours in the morning after breakfast. Sometimes it comes in the lonely hours of the night. She was twenty years old. She has never been able to escape the thing that happened to her when she was Miss Anna Minert, twenty, a picnic bound employee of the Western Electric Company. Mrs. Grimmer was a passenger aboard the Great Lakes cruise ship Eastland on July 24, 1915, when it rolled over and sank, drowning 812 persons in the Chicago River at the foot of Clark Street. Mrs. Grimmer survived, but she came so close to being one line of type in the list of the lost that she never has been able to erase the horrifying memory of what happened that drizzly morning. Headline We're not enthusiastic. Quote, I remember it as if it were yesterday, misses Grimmer says. I remember that a lot of the girls who worked in my department at Western Electric weren't particularly keen to go on the cruise. Quote, it was going to take us to Michigan City and back for the day, but most of us weren't enthusiastic. I remember that seven of us finally decided to go as a group, now realized we were going to leave at 7 30 in the morning, so we had to get downtown very early. I lived in Cicero at the time, and the only transportation we had was on the streetcar. Headline went with friends. Some things stick in your mind. I remember how we walked down the wooden steps at Clark Street that led to the eastland. I also remember how I felt later when, soaked to the skin and terrified, I ran up them to get away from the scene. Mrs. Grimmer remembers boarding the Eastland with two of her closest friends, Barbara Hengles and Helen Saipe. They were cousins who lived in La Grange. As they walked across the gangplank to board the cruiser, Mrs. Grimmer recalls saying to her friend Barbara, Isn't it funny that all that water is coming out of the portholes? I wonder why that's happening. That was the first indication of the disaster to come. Water ballast tanks on the eastland were being emptied so the cruiser would sit low enough in the water for passengers to board from a gangplank, but so many passengers came aboard so quickly that the boat was quickly thrown out of balance and listed toward starboard, the dockside. Crewmen began urging people to go to the second deck to avoid congestion. That's where misses Grimmer and her friends went, laughing and joking. I had my camera with me, she recalls, and my purse and a lunch basket. I had to have a place to sit down, so when we got upstairs, there were seven of us. I sat on a bench against one of the cabins. Barbara sat next to me, and the other five stood in front of us in a semicircle. We were getting into the spirit now, and all of us were laughing and joking. Suddenly, the boat lurched to one side, and we gasped for breath. Anna, aren't you afraid? One of the girls asked me. No, I'm not, I answered. It's probably just one of the tugs getting ready to pull us away from the dock. Headline went all way over. But it wasn't. Mrs. Grimmer didn't know at the time, but the ship's engineers were trying desperately to take on enough water in the ballast tanks to balance the ship. It dipped first one way, and then just as quickly it listed toward the dockside and went all the way over. I remember the horrible screams of the children and the young girls. I let my package go and turned to grab a porthole which was right in back of me. Barbara screamed and disappeared. She didn't try to grab onto anything. I couldn't swim. The ship kept turning, and I felt the water touch my shoes, and then my knees, and finally it was up to my shoulders. Headline had to do something. I knew I had to do something or I'd drown. I saw there was a piece of heavy canvas above the porthole window where a lifesaver had been stored. I reached hand over hand to grab onto it. I made it. But what was I going to do next? The screams all about me were awful. Now I could even see bodies, men and women who had drowned floating by me on their way downstream. I could see men and women in buildings along the waterfront, tossing chairs to those in the water so they could float. I saw one man hit on the back of the head by one of these chairs and sink out of sight. I saw another one leave his holding perch on the ship to get one. He couldn't swim. He struggled for a few seconds and then went under. The chair kept bobbing up and down in the water. Headline Grabs Man's Leg. Mrs. Grimmer was truly frightened now. Then a ray of hope appeared. A man was holding on the side of the ship above her. Mrs. Grimmer grabbed onto the man's leg and attempted to pull herself up out of the water. The man recoiled in horror. Let go of my leg, he screamed, and began kicking Mrs. Grimmer frantically with his other leg in an attempt to push her into the river. This is when I panicked, Mrs. Grimmer remembers. I'd been all right until this point. I'd been trying to hold my breath so I'd float in the water, but when that man started trying to kick me, I lost my head. Headline Man grabs her hand. Her screams for help were heeded by another man perched on the cruiser, which by now was on its side in the river. He came over and grabbed my hand. He told me not to worry, Mrs. Grimmer said. I let myself go, and he held me there by one arm. I was just saying my prayers of thanks that I had been saved. But then he almost let go of my hand and my whole body tingled with panic again. I'm awfully sorry, girl, he said, but I don't have the strength to lift you up. I'm going to have to let you go. Mrs. Grimmer pleaded with the man to keep trying. He told her again he was very sorry, but that he would have to let go and fall into the river. Headline Hold me up. I kept screaming. Another man came over and grabbed my other hand. Together they pulled me up onto the side of the ship. For several minutes I just gasped for breath. I never even had a chance to thank either of them. I never saw the man who tried to kick me again. I wonder what happened to him. Mrs. Grimmer remained standing on the side of the ship with the other survivors until barges were brought alongside and formed a pathway for them to walk to the shore. You have no idea what it was like to stand there amid all that confusion, she said. All around you could see men pulling women and babies out of the water in an effort to save their lives. The only sound that comes to me from it are the moans and cries of the survivors and the rescuers. There were many times when it seemed that the men attempting the rescues were even more grief stricken than the survivors. There were a million heroes that day. I don't suppose anybody ever knew their names. Headline Seven Friends Drowned misses Grimmer was finally escorted ashore. There she learned the six girls with whom she had boarded the cruiser were missing. All of them were drowned, she later learned. I met my department supervisor on Clark Street, she said. Several of the other girls from our department were there too. I remember him looking at us with a serious eye and saying, Girls, I think you'd better have a little drink from this bottle. I've never been a drinker, but I was so wet and frightened that I took one that day right from the bottle as I stood on Clark Street. I've never gotten over worrying what people who saw me might have thought, but there was nothing else I could do. I'd never been through anything like that in my life before. End of article. Friday, july twenty third, nineteen sixty five. Headline eight hundred and twelve died half century ago. Suddenly the boat lurched. This is by Russell Lane from the Chicago Associated Press. Quote All of us were laughing and joking, Anna Grimmer seventy Oak Park recalls. Suddenly the boat lurched to one side and we gasped for breath. It was fifty years ago at 7 30 AM July 24th, misses Grimmer, then Anna Minert, sat on the upper deck of the excursion steamer Eastland, with fellow employees of Western Electric Company. Moments after the lurch, the Eastland, which had 2,500 people aboard, rolled on its side and settled in 18 feet of water beside a Chicago River mooring. Within the next few minutes, 812 passengers died, most of them trapped in lower deck compartments. Injuries and disease later raised the toll to 835. Mrs. Grimmer, unable to swim and trying desperately to keep afloat, saw the leg of a man who was clinging to the upset vessel. She grabbed the leg and tried to pull herself out of the water. The man kicked himself free. That is when I panicked, she remembers. Like many survivors, she was finally hauled to refuge on the vessel's side, which was above water, and got ashore on a bridge improvised from rafts. The Eastland was one of five boats chartered for the holiday outing of 7,000 employees of Western Electric's Hawthorne Works. The picnic was to have been held in Michigan City, Indiana, a four-hour boat ride from Chicago. As hundreds struggled in the water, workers in the big Reed Murdoch building, now Chicago's traffic court center, threw wooden chairs into the river from the windows. Produce handlers in Southwater Market across the river heaved lettuce crates, fruit baskets, and whatever was at hand that would float. Many survivors grabbed these makeshift life preservers. Joseph J. Polllich at 74, a retired Chicago savings and loan executive, stood on the boarding deck with a friend, Barney Napolsky as the open hatch on the left side of the vessel suddenly dipped under the murky water. The weight of the boat caused an extreme force of water through our opening, and we were carried across the boat, he recalls. The other side was not turned up, and I could see the light. The water was near the top, and we had no trouble getting out. Moments later, Pollock and Napolski were lying on the Eastlands Hull beside the hatch, dragging others out of the vessel. Victims were brought ashore and laid in lines. For a time, efforts were made to resuscitate them. The circumstances which caused the 2,200 ton vessel to capsize were fixed in a finding by the federal courts. On August 7th, two weeks after the accident, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that the Eastland's owners were not liable for damages. The Eastland was seaworthy, the courts held. Responsibility was not pinned down, although the findings said instability resulted from failure to maintain the full water ballast tanks. The ballast tanks had been emptied in order to raise the low boarding hatch high enough to accommodate a gangplank from the riverbank. The Eastland lay unused in a slip for years after the accident. Then the Navy claimed it, took away most of the high superstructure, painted the vessel, and renamed it the Wilmet. During World War, the ship served on Lake Michigan, training Navy gun crew members, which she took on cruises 800 at a time. In 1946, at the age of 43, the ship was sold for scrap. So before we continue, I want to share some late-breaking discoveries I made about Anna. I usually can find biographical information fairly easily for the people that I research and the stories that I share with you, but Anna was elusive. I had a theory that she was going by a different name, and it took some work. She was indeed going by a different name in her life. It was not the name she was given at birth. Anna's legal name was Alma Augusta Johanna, Johanna. And she was born January 23rd, 1893 in Chicago. And she was baptized February 18th, 1893 at 1 Emmanuel Lutheran Church. It's a Missouri Synod church, so basically German immigrants or first second generation immigrants. Her parents were Hermann Minert, Teresa Beyer. What's interesting out the gate is that she was born in 1893. However, in the articles where she was interviewed, she claimed to have been 20 years old, which meant she would have been born in 1895. Both parents immigrated from Prussia, and that would be Poland today. And by 1920, Alma, aka Anna Minert, was married to Leopold Grimmer. That's one of the names he goes by. And the family was living in Chicago and they had a baby girl, Arlene. By 1930, she and Arlene were living with her mother and father. In the census record, it's said that she was still married, but her husband seems to be out of the picture at that point. By the 1950s census, she and her daughter are living together in Cicero and they are both working. Later, Anna AKA Alma eventually moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Anna Alma Minert died eleventh of october nineteen ninety. I will share her obituary which I located on Find a Grave. She was buried with the name Alma H Minert Grimmer, and the obituary appeared in The Advocate Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Saturday, october thirteenth, nineteen ninety. Deceased name Grimmer Alma Minert died three PM Thursday, october eleventh, nineteen ninety at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center. She was ninety-seven. A native of Chicago, Illinois, and a resident of Baton Rouge, visiting at Rabinhorst Funeral Home East eight AM until religious services at nine AM, Saturday at the funeral home conducted by Reverend Walter S. Smith, burial in Resthaven Gardens of Memory, survived by a daughter and son in law, Arlene Grimmer, and Herb Smith Baton Rouge, five nephews, six nieces, grandchildren, great grandchildren, great great nieces and great great nephews, preceded in death by parents, two brothers and five sisters. She was a member of Lutheran Church of Our Savior. That's the end of the obituary, and I'm so relieved to have found out what happened to Anna Alma Minard Grimmer. And based on this obituary, you can bet that she has a lot of family members who are still living. And since the Eastland Disaster Connection was not mentioned in the obituary, probably many of them, if not all of them, don't know about this connection. So I can only hope that they'll somehow find their way to this podcast and or the family tree and biographical information that I will place on my website about Anna. So what did you think of those two accounts? Especially the first one where Anna Minert Grimmer was interviewed. Her memories were so vivid, and the writer too deserves credit for stepping back and letting her speak while still giving her story the context it deserved. That opening he crafted pulls us straight into her experience. It's as if we are there. What stays with me, though, is how I even found Anna's story. I wasn't looking for Anna, I was searching for the photographer, Fred Eckert, and that search led me to the breadcrumb that was buried on the Eastland Memorial website, and that breadcrumb opened up an entire story that had been sitting there for decades. Not hidden at all, but ignored, not connected to the people who were a part of it and the people who need to see it and hear it. For the past two years that has been a constant pattern behind so many of the episodes I've shared with you. These aren't fringe stories. They are simply stories that no one seemed to be looking for. People who were never mentioned in the Eastland retellings or people listed without any biographical detail, as if nothing more could be known. Well, hopefully by now you know this is not true, but I have to say each week when I make a discovery such as this one, I am shocked and delighted at the same time. And we'll keep doing this, by the way. So I hope you enjoyed getting a chance to know Anna and hearing about her experience. I'm just as surprised each week as maybe you are. And next week I'll bring another set of stories reclaimed from those forgotten corners, thanks in no small part to the work of the Eastland Memorial Society and the fact that they did such a good job of preserving the records. Their research is still a gift to all of us and to the history of the Eastland disaster itself. So thank you as always for listening and thanks for caring about these people. 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 www.flowerinther.com. 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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Natalie Zett

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