EASTLAND VICTIMS MAY GET LASTING MEMORIAL FROM CITY

By Maura Kelly
Tribune Staff Writer
May 17, 2000

Nearly 85 years after the Eastland steamer capsized in the Chicago River in one of America's worst maritime accidents, the Chicago Public Art Committee voted unanimously Tuesday to build a memorial to the disaster.

It would be the first city-funded remembrance of the Eastland disaster in which 844 men, women and children were killed on July 24, 1915.

The only other marker in Chicago of the tragedy, a plaque near the site of the accident, is missing. It was installed privately in 1990 at the urging of high school students from the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy who studied the disaster for a class project.

The committee believes the plaque has been stolen from its perch on Wacker Drive just east of LaSalle Street, prompting its decision to build a memorial. The plaque, which hung on a pole in the middle of a brick-paved lookout over the river, has been missing since the end of April. The city's Public Arts Program reported it stolen to police on May 5.

But it is unclear if the plaque has been stolen or is sitting in the offices of another city agency for restoration or other work, as some Eastland history buffs believe.

Until the 2-by-3-foot plaque that weighs at least 100 pounds is found, the committee voted to replace it temporarily with a smaller one to mark the spot of the disaster. That plaque is expected to be in place within a month, officials said.

When Wacker Drive is rebuilt next year, the committee plans to replace the plaque with a larger memorial.

"We should do something a little more serious and important," said Michael Lash, director of public art for the city. "It is one of the worst naval disasters, with the most deaths. It deserves a little more attention."

Signs along Wacker Drive commemorate other historical sites such as the city's first large warehouse for storing pork, which early skeptics dubbed Hubbard's Folly after its builder. Other plaques mark the site of the first session of the Board of Trade and a trading post with Native Americans.

The Eastland disaster killed three times as many people as the Great Chicago Fire but has been largely ignored by historians. However, a nursery owner in DuPage County has spent 27 years collecting artifacts from the ship to display in his Eastland Disaster Museum in Wheaton, and two other groups recently formed to remember the accident. The disaster is also featured at the end of the Museum of Science and Industry's current exhibit on the Titanic.

On July 24, 1915, about 2,500 people--most of them employees of Western Electric Co. and their families --boarded the steamer that was to take them to a company picnic in Michigan City, Ind.

The ship was top-heavy from the addition of lifeboats and rafts, required by law following the sinking of the Titanic three years earlier, on its top deck. As passengers crowded on the port side to look at other boats, a worker struggled to adjust the ballast below.

Just as the Eastland shoved off from the wharf at the southeast end of the Clark Street bridge at 7:25 a.m., it slowly began rolling over and eventually settled on the river bottom.

At least 844 people drowned in the river, just a few feet from shore or in the flooded lower decks of the boat.

"There's nobody left to speak for the victims. If we forget about what happened with the Eastland, these people would have died in vain," said Karl J. Sup, president of the 2-year-old Eastland Memorial Society that also wants to develop a larger memorial to the accident.

"I just don't want people to forget it," he said.

Sup's grandparents and great-aunt survived the accident.

Ted Wachholz, president of the Eastland Disaster Historical Society, also wants a larger memorial because he said people often walked by the plaque without noticing it.

His wife's grandmother, great-grandmother and two other members of her family survived the accident.

"It's part of history and it shouldn't be forgotten," Wachholz said.