Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

Trading Places, Trading Fates

• Natalie Zett

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Ever wondered how the tragedies of the past can shape the inspiration of the present? Join me on an emotional journey through my family history in Trading Places, Trading Fates (Episode 20), where I delve into the haunting tale of the Eastland Disaster that forever marked my lineage. As an author and family historian, I continue to share my personal rumination on how this historical event led me to uncover my roots and find creative inspiration.

In this narrative, I take a deep dive into the tragic yet inspiring story of my great aunt Martha Pfeiffer, one of the victims of the Eastland Disaster. A simple exchange of tickets between my grandmother and Martha sealed her fate, serving as a poignant reminder of how a small piece of paper can profoundly alter lives.

Join me as I shed light on the importance of family stories and the responsibility we have to honor the legacy of our ancestors. Through the compassionate lens of Jun Fujita, we discover the heart-wrenching beauty captured in the aftermath of this tragedy.

Let this episode inspire you to start your own journey into the past, fostering courage, connection, and the uncovering of your own sacred stories. Exploring our roots can have a transformative power, shaping our creativity and perception of freedom


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  •  Driving Home - Noam Zaguri  (Artlist)
natalie zett:

Why Hello, I'm Natalie Zett and welcome to Flower in the River. Flower in the River is a podcast about a book I wrote of the same name, and that book is about the Eastland disaster that took place in 1915 in Chicago and how that long ago tragedy affected my family for generations. I'll talk about writing and family history and what to do when the supernatural comes into your life when you're innocently doing a family history research project. Come on and let's have some fun with this. Hello, this is Natalie, and welcome to Episode 20. Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are. I mean 20 podcasts.

natalie zett:

I heard from another podcaster that if you get past episode 10 of your podcast, you're good to go. So apparently, being a podcaster comes with a curse. If you can get past the 10 episodes, I guess you're gold. I don't know. But anyway, enough of that. This episode is the continuation of reading the book, but it's also the continuation of citing so many synchronicities that have happened because of this journey and I share those with you. So hopefully you'll be excited about your own journey because, again, it's one of those things you can read about or hear about, but it's when you're on the journey that it is so exciting and so transformative.

natalie zett:

And people have asked me why did this happen to you in this way? And I think the answer is fairly simple. But just because it's simple doesn't mean that it's easy. I suppose because I got curious. That trope has come up a lot lately. I've heard be curious not judgmental in various forms in the last couple of weeks and that's never been a problem for me. But I think general curiosity or intellectual curiosity I do not know where that comes from, but I think that those of us who do reflect a lot and overthink things, well, it's the vehicle that pulls us into learning more, and not just learning more for the fun of it, but learning more because we want to contribute something of our learnings to the world. So I think, also with that curiosity, one of the outcomes is that generosity of spirit. At least I've seen that grow inside me. I'm not sure I started off like that initially, but that certainly has been a byproduct of this curious and strange journey that I've been on for quite a while now.

natalie zett:

So during the last two episodes I decided to stop reading from the chapters of the book and I paused. I paused because we were nearing the 108th anniversary of the Eastland disaster and in a sense, I wanted to take a break from the book and focus on the person who actually helped the book come to be, and that was my mother's half-sister, pearl Cerny, and I wanted to honor her, and I did. And finally, on the day or near the day of the 108th anniversary of the Eastland disaster, I put out the podcast that is actually a section of the forthcoming audiobook and it's about what happened on the day of the Eastland disaster to my family, and that's where the combination of the stories from my mother's sister came into play, as well as my own research and imagination. Together, all of us living in dead were able to reconstruct the scene, the crime scene maybe not the crime scene, but it was the tragedy scene of one particular family, and that would be my family on that day. But I did a lot of other things to honor July 24th 1915. It seemed really important and I can't even tell you why it just again.

natalie zett:

There's certain things that happen with this project that almost seem like compulsions, that I must do them, and once I do them it's like okay, I did that. But I ventured out and made a little YouTube video. Video is not normally something that I do, but I have done a number of videos throughout my corporate career as well, as I have done videos about genealogy. So I made a little video and it was a small section from my book about again what happened on that day when my family heard the news and, as always, I created various types of artwork around their graphic design, around the disaster and around various family members, such as my mom's sister, my aunt Pearl and my grandmother, because I wanted people to see who these people were. I talk a lot about them, but I don't necessarily move them up front and center, because Martha Pfeiffer really is the star of this whole thing, but I think it's nice to have the other characters who were involved also presented. And, as always and forever, what I hope is that when people see this work, that they are inspired, or I should say motivated, to go back and do their own work and to try to uncover their own treasures in their own family history.

natalie zett:

Yes, indeed, you will find things that you didn't know. You will find things that you wish you didn't know and you will find things that will also lift you above your current situation. I can't 100% guarantee it, but I can 90% guarantee it. How's that? And hopefully, when you engage with your own dead, you emerge with more of a heart connection to your own past because, face it, you are here because they once were, and I'll speak for myself. You emerge with a lot more courage because sometimes the very aspects of your family that aren't that pretty, when you can look at those and face them, that can be the source of a lot of our courage.

natalie zett:

One of our greatest fears, I think, sometimes, is to look at the things that aren't positive. We have a culture sometimes that's almost toxic positivity. I mean, I'm all for optimism, I really am. It would be difficult to function in this world without hope and without optimism, because that's all we have. And I build for the future, for the time where I no longer am. But the time is coming where I know somebody is going to pick up this piece of work that I'm doing. Maybe a lot of somebodies. I don't necessarily know who they are, but I do know they exist and I'm building for them. So I hope that that is the case for you. In fact, I'll keep harping on this because I'm a teacher, right, I do that.

natalie zett:

And the other thing I realized that is naturally emerging as I do this work is that I'm able to embrace some of the more difficult aspects of my own past. I'm not a religious person per se, but I'm kind of a spiritual person. I even debate that. But I am a seeker, a skeptical seeker but I do have a very deep and challenging and convoluted religious history too and I'm exploring that again and taking what is good from that and bringing that forward, because there's so much good that comes from these various traditions. And unfortunately, as we know I don't have to say it, but I'm going to say it anyway A lot of this stuff has been weaponized and been taken by people whose, let's just say, their goals are something different. And sometimes it's important for us even if we don't necessarily buy into it, but we buy into the power of it to take it back and look at it again and in a sense, push it forward and just say, look, this is what's really good about these traditions.

natalie zett:

And I've done quite a bit of blogging about my two great aunts who, on my father's side not the Pfeiffer side that I've written about who were sisters of St Francis and they were in a convent in Joliet, illinois and they did a lot of work elsewhere, but that's where they went to. So I had these sisters who were sisters, these aunts who were sisters, and then, maybe a week or two later, I did a tribute to Sister Dorothy Kaisle of the Ursuline nuns, who was, of course, sister Dorothy was killed in El Salvador in 1980. And that also is part of my heritage because I was in school at Ursuline College. So I have this and people have assumed that somehow I have this deep connection to either the sisters or the Catholic Church, and I really don't, other than the fact that on my father's side there were a fair amount of Roman Catholic folks.

natalie zett:

And the other thing I realized when I was at Luther's Seminary and I graduated with a master's degree in systematic theology I know, I'm sure you're impressed, but each week some of the people originally when I was in the ministerial candidate track, we had to prepare sermons each week. Because what do pastors do? They prepare sermons for each week. And so what? I realized? I'm doing this each week for now and it's kind of like the weekly sermon, I guess. Oh my gosh. And I realize I too like to run away from certain aspects of my own past because they did cause a fair amount of pain. But now I realize you know what. This is part of my past too and I need to have the courage to look at it and do these things. So that's the sermon for this week, but let's move on to the exciting stuff that happened. So just this last week.

natalie zett:

After doing all these different creative things to honor my aunt and to honor the memory of those who died in the Eastland disaster, I was remembering where it all began 25 or 26 years ago. How's that? And when I was first got the information about my aunt being killed in the Eastland disaster, I went hunting. There was nothing, but in parallel, at nearly the same time, these people who I've mentioned before Ted Walkholz, barbara Decker-Walkholz, susan Decker, susan and Barb again are descendants of someone who survived the Eastland disaster. Thank you. And Ted married Barb and they formed the Eastland Disaster Historical Society. And again, to say I'm indebted to them, to say we all are indebted to them it's as an understatement. I've kept in contact with them for all these years and I don't live in Chicago, but I was able to watch the live stream of their commemorative event in Chicago this past week and as I'm speaking, it is Saturday, july 29th.

natalie zett:

Goodbye, july, at any rate, it was really good to see the scene of the disaster site with Ted and company there, and although I've been there many times, it was good to see it again. It was nice, it was peaceful and Ted was speaking and as he was segueing into some other information, he mentioned that he was going to tell the story of two families that had not been widely shared before and I thought, oh, this is cool, because I'm always interested in the families who other families besides mine who were affected by the Eastland Disaster. I know of some people, but not that many, and there have to be quite a few people that maybe don't even know they have this connection. The first story he talked about was one I indeed had not heard of, and I do need to listen to that live stream again because it was kind of confusing. There were people who were friends and relatives, but there was a group of people I think 15 who went on the picnic and 12 of them, as Ted said, never came home, and I want to look at that again and just find out more about them and try to find newspaper clippings about them. It's just again, we are, even if they're strangers and they died such a long time ago. We are, in a sense, forever bound to each other because of this.

natalie zett:

And then the second story, and I was not prepared for this. Ted walked off briefly, then returned to the microphone holding up my book and it was just I can't even tell you what he said, I just I was watching it on my phone and I immediately burst into tears and it was like, oh my gosh, I never did this piece of writing for anything, any purpose, other than to honor my family and to give my mother her history. That was the biggest motivation for doing this. I knew this is very much a niche project, that the interest is not going to be tremendous, and I get that. And again, I did not do that.

natalie zett:

Or I think it was Joanna Penn, who's the hero of all of us independent authors. She was interviewing someone on her podcast and I think this person said that there are three motivations for creatives fame, fortune and freedom. Well, fame I have no interest in, or very little interest in. No, no interest in Fortune, that wouldn't be too bad, but it's the freedom, I think, of being able to do this, the freedom of being able to honor my own life and the lives of those who came before me, the way that makes sense to me and the way that is authentic. And I think, when one is playing for an audience and basically twisting and contorting oneself to please an audience but an audience is often fickle so I think the most important thing and I've said this as a writing teacher too is to be true to yourself, and I do think if Shakespeare didn't say it, ralph Waldo Emerson said it. I got to look that up. But being true to yourself takes a lot of courage.

natalie zett:

But the thing is, for me, taking care of this story was the motivation. I owed it to this woman, my great aunt, who was killed. And so to see what was once an idea that I was living with. And I had no idea. I was an article writer, I was a journalist. I never had any interest in a book because it takes too much work and, honestly, people have this illusion that the money will roll in, the money is going to seep right out. You really don't get, unless you are like a high-end author like JK Rowling, stephen King, some of these folks. It's a really strange disparity. And so that was not the motivation. It never was. It was just to fulfill the promise that I will do something. My mother's sister asked me to do something with this, so I had multiple promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep and all that, and so that was the motivation for this, and so I was shocked to see my idea manifested in this book. This was my first viewing of the book that I created, being at the site where the disaster happened. I'm still dealing with that. I just I don't know how to wrap my mind around it Because, again, it is an honor, it's a shock.

natalie zett:

One of my favorite poems by Alice Walker, be Nobody's Darling, be an outcast qualified to live among your dead. That's Alice Walker's poem, which is called I'm looking it up Be Nobody's Darling. And so that was really my only motivation. And this is kind of a sequestered area of my life, because am I normally like this? Well, no, but this is a special aspect of who I am, and my regular self in the world is quite different than this. But this is kind of like my sacred spot, my sacred place where I commune with the relatives and you know, all that sort of thing. It's very important, and the fact that anybody else is interested in this outside of my family still amazes me. I'm glad that the people who are here are here, and so that's that's. I'm still in shock about this, about having the book at the disaster site. But thank you Ted, thank you Barb, thank you Susan.

natalie zett:

As always, there are a lot of us who again are descendants of this tragedy one way or the other. And there's another aspect of this tragedy what about the observers? Right, that's another type of descendant. What about all of those people who were down there just to see, you know, the big send-off? Or maybe they were waiting in line to board one of the other ships and have their fun day at the Indiana Dunes, you know? And it was just like whoa.

natalie zett:

And then this happens there was somebody on the scene that day, a photojournalist. I think he was his newspapers only photojournalist, but he was a photojournalist on the scene and probably just there to photograph the big event and put it in the paper. And he's there standing and then this happens what does he do? He photographs the entire thing. He photographed every aspect of what happened that day. He photographed I think he was a fireman holding the limp, lifeless body of a child. This photo is iconic.

natalie zett:

If you ever go and research the Eastland disaster, you will see that particular photograph and he did his job, and this person's name was June. I think the full name was Juno Suki Fujita, and forgive me if I'm mispronouncing this, but he went by Jun Fujita. He was a young photographer I think he was only working for his paper for a year when this happened and thanks to his professionalism he didn't just photograph to photograph. I don't know how he was able to maintain presence of mind on that day, to take those photographs, to hold that camera steady. I don't even know what kind of photography equipment was used in 1915, but it surely was not the iPhone and so he was there.

natalie zett:

When I first looked for information, I was hunting, of course, for narratives. I wanted information about the Eastland disaster. I'm really not somebody that hunts for photos per se, but there were so many and they were so well done, and so, in the horror of it, there was a beauty. He was able to capture a beauty. Somehow. His compassionate eye came through in those photographs. But he was so professional and those photographs are composed so beautifully, and Jun Fujita's photos were the bridge and I could see what happened that day. And it influenced me so much that In my book in the last chapter I have two of the main characters, one of whom is Zara, going to an exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

natalie zett:

So they're going to see both the Titanic exhibition, which was juxtaposed with the Eastland Disaster exhibition that was put together for the very first time in the year 2000. I fictionalized that account but that actually did happen. And I have the two characters conversing after walking through the glorious over-the-top Titanic exhibit to this rather humble exhibit of the Eastland artifacts, and the one character says something like wow, this is a lot more understated compared to the Titanic. And Zara responds this has something the Titanic never will. And her friend says what? And she responds photographs by June Fujita.

natalie zett:

I hate to think of what could have would have happened If he hadn't been there. There probably would have been no one else able to do what he did. I don't think people walked around with cameras. Cameras, I think, were expensive and probably bulky and everything else. So I'm not sure people walked around with them. Maybe some people did, but generally no. And if anything, there might have been people on the scene after the disaster well, after the disaster and photographed that. But this was entirely something different and I can always tell June Fujita's photographs, let's just say they're very distinctive. They're just so filled with life, even in the midst of death. It's a craziest thing.

natalie zett:

So I have been intrigued with Mr Fujita. I've wondered a lot about him and he has been kind of difficult to track down until recently. He died in the 1960s. But on Facebook I posted some of these Eastland Meditations, eastland Memorial tributes, and I got a new follower who said he was an author, and of course I always want to meet new authors. Well, this gentleman, his name is Graham Harrison Lee. Guess what? Graham's great uncle was none other than June Fujita. So he's taking care of June Fujita's legacy, doing all kinds of things. He's engaged in writing a book. I don't know much about him, but we have been texting back and forth and I thought again of all the synchronicities that have happened along this journey, whether it's meeting the founders of the Eastland Disaster Historical Society and 25 years later this connection continues or now meeting someone who is related to the very person who visually recorded this event for posterity.

natalie zett:

That's it for now and I'm going to segue into Chapter 4, which is called One Way Ticket. The chapter title references the fact that this ticket that my Aunt Martha got for the Western Electric Company picnic was indeed a One Way Ticket, but it's also the story where the protagonist starts connecting the dots. She realizes that her grandmother was the Western Electric Employee and she gave her tickets to her younger sister, and that One Way Ticket changed everything for their family. So I will share an excerpt from Chapter 4, one Way Ticket, and I'll catch you next week. Have a good one. Deciding to forego sleep, zara brewed some coffee and continued examining Pearl's manuscript. Pearl wrote Martha Elizabeth Pfeiffer drowned on the Eastland on the 24th of July 1915, where about 844 people lost their lives.

natalie zett:

Western Electric had a yearly boat excursion picnic. Martha didn't work at Western Electric, but her sister, annie did and gave her the tickets. Martha and her girlfriend planned to attend the picnic. The boat was still moored in the Chicago River when it overturned. Western Electric never again had a company picnic.

natalie zett:

An exchange of paper. Paper changed everything. That's what Magda meant. My grandmother gave her sister the tickets that Martha paid for with her life. If that exchange hadn't happened, had my grandmother gone on the Eastland instead, maybe none of us my mom, my sister, her sons and I would be here. Oh, martha, is that all that's left of your nearly 20 years on Earth? A newspaper clipping and a few paragraphs? Why didn't I ask about my grandmother's family before this? Why did no one besides Magda hint at Aunt Martha and how she died? I hope you consider buying my book, because I owe people money and I'm just kidding about that. But the one thing I'm not kidding about is that this podcast and my book are dedicated to the memory of the 844 who died on the Eastland. Goodbye for now.

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