Edmund Fitzgerald (1895–1986) was an executive at Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, serving as president (1947–58) and chairman of the board (1958–60). In 1957 the business commissioned the construction of a freighter that was to be the then largest ship on the Great Lakes, measuring 729 feet (222 meters) long and weighing more than 13,600 tons. On June 8, 1958, Fitzgerald’s wife, Elizabeth, christened the vessel the Edmund Fitzgerald. It reportedly took three tries to break the champagne bottle—which some believed was a bad omen. The freighter became famous in 1975, when it sank in Lake Superior during a storm.
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