Update on the Edmund Fitzgerald life preserver
Andrew Norton
I recently mentioned a story about a family that discovered a battered orange life preserver with Edmund Fitzgerald stenciled on it. Many wondered if this was a hoax of some kind or if it could possibly be the real deal. Cynthia Edwards has apparently put to rest any ideas of the ring's authenticity or chance that it was a hoax. She is quoted in the Marquette Mining Journal as saying -
. . . her father acquired the orange preserver more than 20 years ago and stenciled ‘‘Edmund Fitzgerald’’ on it.
The ring was kept at the family’s cabin along Lake Superior and the Eagle River — not far from where it ultimately was found in the Upper Peninsula’s Keweenaw Peninsula — until it was lost about two years ago.
Her father painted the ship’s name on the ring as kind of a remembrance of the ship.
She also stated that, "It was never to trick anybody or make anybody think it was real."