Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Lightfoot
From:
Joe Offer
Date: 01 Sep 13 - 09:38 PM
Here's an obituary dated August 29, 2013 from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
EDMUND B. FITZGERALD
Fitzgerald led Cutler-Hammer, helped bring Brewers to Milwaukee
Edmund B. Fitzgerald, who led Cutler-Hammer for 15 years and was a key player in bringing major league baseball back to Milwaukee, died Wednesday of natural causes at his home in Nashville, Tenn., his family said. He was 87.
Fitzgerald was sometimes called "young Ed" to distinguish him from his father, an influential civic leader and former chairman of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co.
His name — and his father's — also was synonymous with one of the most famous shipwrecks on the Great Lakes, the 1975 sinking of the iron ore ship Edmund Fitzgerald in a nasty storm on Lake Superior. Commissioned as part of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co.'s holdings, the massive carrier bore the name of the company's president. The tale of the storm that took the lives of 29 men was made famous by a Gordon Lightfoot ballad "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" in 1976.
In a 1970 news story, "young Ed" was identified as one of four men who led the long fight to get another baseball franchise for Milwaukee. One of the other four, Bud Selig, was Brewers president.
Fitzgerald was by then Brewers vice president. His Milwaukee roots, the story noted, ran deep: One grandfather was pioneer shipbuilder William E. Fitzgerald; another grandfather, Frank R. Bacon, founded Cutler-Hammer.
Edmund Bacon Fitzgerald grew up in Milwaukee. He joined Milwaukee-based Cutler-Hammer Inc. in 1946, where he worked as a sales manager for a time. A year later, he married Elizabeth McKee Christensen of Milwaukee.
Fitzgerald served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and again during the Korean War.
His civic work in Milwaukee over the years included heading what was then known as the Community Chest campaign in 1956, as well as work with the Milwaukee Boys Club, Goodwill Industries and Children's Service Society. He also served on the board of trustees for Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co., First Wisconsin National Bank and Beloit College.
"He was an exceptional leader," Bob Whitaker, former director of corporate relations for Cutler-Hammer, said Thursday. "He moved the company forward dramatically."
Fitzgerald's task in helping to bring a baseball team back to Milwaukee amounted to a sales job, he said in 1970. He served as the team's chairman of the board until 1982. He also served for several years as a member of the Executive Council of Major League Baseball and chaired the player relations committee.
"I like to sell," he once said.
Selig, now commissioner of Major League Baseball, said Fitzgerald "played a crucial role in bringing baseball back to Milwaukee."
"I can't tell you how determined he was," Selig said. "He and I traveled from one end of the country to the other."
"He was a community leader who really dug in," Selig added. "I have such great admiration and respect for him. He was a brilliantly successful businessman."
Fitzgerald was chairman and chief executive officer of Cutler-Hammer, the electrical products manufacturer, when the firm was purchased by Eaton Corp. in 1979.
A news story a few years later described Fitzgerald as "a casualty of sorts in the great American takeover game." Fitzgerald had fought to keep Cutler-Hammer an independent company, and resigned less than six months after Eaton took over.
After working for a year as a consultant, he was tapped in 1980 to lead Northern Telecom, a Canadian telecommunications company that became a multibillion-dollar global leader in its field.
Fitzgerald served on President Ronald Reagan's National Telecommunications Security Advisory Council.
A 1984 business story said Fitzgerald "is credited with speeding up the decision-making process to capitalize on Northern's technological lead, and with wedging open markets in the United States. He had the contacts, credentials and Yankee know-how that helped the Canadian firm overcome its unfamiliarity with more free-wheeling U.S. business practices."
Wary of the unfriendly takeover and its impact on a company, Fitzgerald noted in the 1984 story that the majority of Northern Telecom's stock was in steady hands. "Nobody's going to jump us on the blind side while we're making long-term decisions," he said in an interview with the Milwaukee Sentinel.
For many years, Fitzgerald and his wife lived in Toronto and Nashville, where the firm had its U.S. headquarters. He retired in 1990, taught management courses for a time at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and founded a business advisory service firm. His wife died in 2012.
As for the legacy of the shipwreck — it was never far from his mind. The launch of the ship was the happiest day of his father's life, he once said. And the day of the wreck was "probably the worst day of my father's life."
Fitzgerald ran into Lightfoot, the singer, at a dinner hosted by the Canadian prime minister in the 1980s.
"I told him what my name was, and he looked rather surprised," Fitzgerald recalled in 2005, on the 30th anniversary of the wreck. He called the artist's 1976 hit a "fine song."
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