Retired AP reporter helped cement the legend of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

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Copyright 1959 AP. All rights reserved.

FILE - The Fitzgerald in a 1959 file photo, with a crew of 28 to 30 men, was carrying a load of 26,216 tons of taconite pellets. (AP Photo, file)

LANSING, Mich. – Associated Press reporter Harry Atkins was far from Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975, “when the gales of November came early." But his news coverage the following day of the infamous wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald helped shape its legacy.

Atkins, now 86, was a news reporter in Detroit when he was sent to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to write about the Fitzgerald. The freighter was transporting iron ore from Wisconsin to Zug Island in Detroit when it encountered a terrifying storm. All 29 men aboard died, and the exact cause of the wreck remains a mystery.

The Fitzgerald was the la