Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told Podcast
1) She Stayed on the Line: From the Eastland Disaster to the Front Lines of France
Send us a text Sirens, floodwater, shattering glass, and a calm voice saying, “Just a moment, please.” We revisit the women who turned raw noise into order—telephone operators whose steady hands and q...Show More
2) The Afterlife of a Story
Send us a text What happens when the storyteller is gone—but the story keeps rewriting itself? A single family biography can carry the weight of a neighborhood’s memory. We open the archives on a 20-y...Show More
3) From Sea to City: A Mariner’s Journey into Chicago’s Past
Send us a text A city comes alive when you can stand on a corner and glimpse yesterday behind today’s skyline. That’s the spark behind my conversation with Ryan Wilson, a designer and mariner who turn...Show More
4) The Eastland Survivors and the Case of the Missing Bylines
Send us a text Memory can vanish quietly—sometimes with a server shutdown. This week, we open the door to the Eastland disaster’s online past: from an early researcher’s dial-up “postcard pages” to an...Show More
5) Excursion to Death — The Witness Who Finally Spoke
Send us a text A tug’s line goes taut, a mandolin stops mid-note, and a sleek steamer rolls onto its side in six minutes. That’s the scene an eight-year-old John Griggs never forgot—and the memory he ...Show More
6) Visiting Every Grave - George Hilton’s Eastland Legacy
Send us a text A century after his birth, George W. Hilton is still guiding our footsteps. This episode honors the transportation historian whose book Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic became the corner...Show More
7) Buried by Omission: The Eastland Victim Who Disappeared
Send us a text This week we take a deeper dive into the Claims and Libels files (In the Matter of the Petition of St. Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company, Owner of the Steamer Eastland, For Limitation of...Show More
8) True Tales from the Eastland: Admiral Rickover Remembers, Survivors Battle for Redress
Send us a text Admiral Hyman Rickover—father of the nuclear navy and one of the most influential military figures of the 20th century—had a connection to the 1915 Eastland disaster that’s been virtual...Show More
9) Shoeless in Chicago: A Rusyn Teen Hero of the Eastland
Send us a text At just 17 years old, Peter Hardy stood on a Chicago bridge in 1915, watching the Eastland fill with happy Western Electric employees on their way to a summer picnic. Moments later, the...Show More
10) Erased by a Typo — Meet the Man Who Saved Lives and Legacies
Send us a text In this episode, I return to Dwight Boyer’s "True Tales of the Great Lakes" and discuss two forgotten heroes of the 1915 Eastland disaster—one remembered correctly, the other erased for...Show More