A wreck apart: 50 years later, the Edmund Fitzgerald legend endures

DETROIT — “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot is a popular song and a cultural touchstone known to draw tears around the Great Lakes. But it hits differently for Darren Muljo. He was 5 years old when his grandfather, watchman Ransom Cundy, climbed aboard the SS Edmund Fitzgerald for the last time.

Cundy, a former U.S. Marine from Lake Linden who served during World War II, survived the hell of Iwo Jima before his 30-year career as a mariner ended in a November gale.

“It raises the hair on my neck every time I hear it,” said Muljo, a safety consultant from Marquette who will join others at the “musty old hall” in Detroit where a solemn bell rang over a sleeping city on Nov. 10, 1975, the night the Mighty Fitz went down.

It’s been 50 years since Rev. Richard Ingalls