Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

River and Reflection: Waters of Legacy

• Natalie Zett

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Ever thought about how a river's journey might mirror our own life's twists and turns? Dive into Episode 27 of Flower in the River podcast where we muse over life's adventures alongside the ever-meandering Chicago River. Like this legendary waterway, weaving its tales of highs and lows through the city, our lives dance to the rhythm of experiences both joyous and challenging.

Shaking things up, we'll also toss you some gold nuggets on digging up family histories and sharpening those pen skills.

In this chapter, Zara continues her deep exploration into her family's poignant past tied to the Eastland disaster. Her ongoing journey of reckoning and enlightenment underscores the crucial act of embracing and chronicling our roots.

As we delve deeper into the profound impact of a tragedy that tragically took 844 vibrant lives, get ready for a soulful journey. We'll explore rejuvenation, acknowledgment, and the thrill of discovery, nudging you to ponder over the threads that weave your personal and ancestral tapestry.

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Music (Artlist)

  • Without the Scars -  Kyle Preston 
  • Nothing Can Stop Us - Nobou 





Natalie:

Hi, this is Natalie Zett and welcome to episode 27 of Flower in the River podcast.

Natalie:

Yes, it's been 27 weeks since we embarked on this journey together and now it is time to pause and take some time for reflection and reinvention. Some people may argue correctly that I have been reinventing all along, but this is more intentional. I am going to change things up just a bit. Of course, I will still share the tales from my family and the Eastland disaster and the book, because, after all, that's what inspires all of this and also those stories are etched deep within my soul and they're probably bred to the bone, as they say. But as the curtain rises on a new chapter, I want to, for sure, make room for the occasional guests, because I had such a good time with Graham Lee and I've invited some more people to be part of this and I hope that they will say yes. The other thing, too, is that with the release of the audiobook, I feel a lot less pressure to read huge sections of the book, because if you want the book, it's out there, it's affordable and it's almost like I'm duplicating efforts at this point, but I will pull out the salient points of the book and comment on what inspired or what informed, or the backstory or whatever, because those are the kind of questions I continue to get from people. So that's part of a change. It's not radical, but it's a change, and for sure I will continue to bring you the latest news surrounding the Eastland and keep you informed of its ever-evolving legacy.

Natalie:

Even though it happened a long time ago, there's still a lot of energy around it. There still seems to be some stuff going on around it, and I've seen the ebb and flow of that. So when there is excitement and interest, I want to be there and help that along, and many of you quite a few people have reached out to me in the last few weeks and asked for writing tips as well as hints on uncovering your own family history, and, yes, I will add a few tips and hints here and there. This actually could end up being a spin-off podcast, and I'm not sure I could do that at this point. But again, stay tuned, we don't know what the future will bring. And the other thing, too, is that there are so many wonderful genealogy podcasters out there with years of experience doing this, and I could refer you to them as well if you really want to do a deep dive. I mean, these people are tremendous. These are the people that I continue to learn from, so I will share links to their podcasts and websites as well.

Natalie:

In terms of the things that I've learned, stumbled over, I can do that for you, and I realized that because I've been immersed in this world for such a long time. It's easy to forget that people who are new to it can be quite overwhelmed, and I remember my feeling of overwhelm, and I want to put myself in your shoes and share with you what would have helped me. Again, I'm not an expert at much of anything, but I am an experiencer of all kinds of things and I've learned a few things along the way. That may work for you. But I always say, and I said to my students when I was teaching go ahead and do the opposite of what I'm telling you to do and see how that works. Or try what I've suggested and see if that works for you. And if it works, great, if you need to modify it better and if it doesn't work, find something else that works for you. You have to find something that jibes with who you are, no matter what you do, and, to rephrase voiceover artist Anthony Pica, I will try to help you step around all the stuff that I seem to step into and I do step into it sometimes, but that's part of the fun of being alive, I think so. As I toyed with the structure of this podcast, a realization washed over me, like the gentle waves of the Chicago River where the Eastland tragedy unfolded. How crazy is it that I missed the fact that the Chicago River is such a metaphor for everything that's happened? Just as the Chicago River weaves its way through the city, carrying stories of joy and sorrow, so does this podcast meander through the tapestry of time?

Natalie:

The other interesting aspect of a river, or anybody of water, is that, as time passes, although the actual entity might remain in the same location. What flows through it is quite different than what flowed through it 100 years ago or even 5 years ago, and so it is with us as well. If you meet a person that you went to high school with, 10, 15 years later, they might kind of look the same, but they've had 10 or 15 years of experience that you might not be privy to if you're not in contact with them, and they're not the same person you went to high school with. The core of who they were and who they are stays the same or more or less the same, but their life experiences and everything they've done and everything that's come into their life has changed them and they're older now, and age changes everyone and that's just a fact of life. And this is one of those tough paradoxes to explain. But as I've done this kind of research and gone deep into the waters of the Chicago River trying to figure out our own family history, I've had to keep in mind that what I was seeing and what I am seeing at present time, it's not the same as it was in 1915, although it was and it is the same location. Therein lies the paradox of all this, and it's good to address this. That is the grief that comes with change. So I'll talk about all those complicated things and try to unravel some of them, but I'll admit that sometimes things get more tangled before they get straightened out in these journeys.

Natalie:

Think about this Long before the towering skyscrapers and bustling city streets, the Chicago River was a gentle thread, quietly meandering through the land where the indigenous communities flourished. It witnessed the ebb and flow of their lives, their stories, hidden beneath its shimmering surface. But as the 20th century emerged, the city of Chicago embarked on a daring endeavor Get this In the year 1900, a remarkable feat of engineering and audacity unfolded. They reversed the flow of the river. Can you imagine the river itself transformed, adapting to the needs of a rapidly growing metropolis. One thing that I was remembering when my aunt Pearl first started sharing the story of the Eastland disaster, my aunt Pearl shared that it was a bad omen that they reversed the direction of the Chicago River back in 1900. I did mention that in the book, but I thought about that again and many things that I had previously dismissed as well.

Natalie:

Superstition I'm taking a second look at. It's like, who knows, maybe there was something that happened when they changed that body of water, but nonetheless, the once serene little waterway became the bustling heart of Chicago, mirroring the city's vibrant spirit. And just as the river's waters shifted and changed, its essence remained steadfast. This is a reminder that even in the face of tremendous change or transformation, it would seem that the core of who we are, whether we're a human being or a river, more or less the core stays the same, at least so far. That's the way I've seen it, and I may change my mind based on future evidence.

Natalie:

Now let's fast forward to the year 1915. We know what happened then if you've been listening to this podcast A somber chapter etched into the river's story. That, of course, was the day when tragedy struck and the city wept the Eastland. A vessel carrying hopeful souls capsized in the river's grasp, claiming the lives of 844 passengers. And the Eastland tragedy, the Eastland disaster, is the heartbeat of this story and everything vibrates from it and vibrates to it. And the heartbeat transformed into a heartbreaking tragedy that became etched into the river's being.

Natalie:

And here comes another paradox. And the paradox is why did the city forget? Why did the world forget about the Eastland? But when I traveled back to the Chicago River for the first time, I wondered if that river remembered and if so, how could I figure out a way to communicate with it? And as I was thinking about the significance of the Chicago River I mean, it is the center of everything that happened I thought about how that river, besides holding the stories, it also has weathered the tests of time, shifting and transforming, and it was a reminder to me that I need to continue to do this as well in this podcast as well as in the rest of my life.

Natalie:

And although I really don't like to be preachy, even though I have that theology degree, just maybe you want to think about that a little bit for yourself, right? Thank you, what is the core of who I am and what has changed for the better or what has changed in a way that I'm not really fond of? So I will return to Chapter 5, just because we've been working through that. But before we go into Chapter 5, here is one helpful hint.

Natalie:

If you're new to genealogy, or even if you've done genealogy or family history for a while, here's a resource that I can mention that you really ought to know about, because not only is it a tremendous resource, it's free, it's familysearchorg. I'm mentioning it just because a lot of people still don't know about this amazing resource, but it is a massive online treasure chest for people looking into their families past there's no other way to describe it. I signed up with the service way back when they were still new and I have referred to them throughout the years, but even so, I always feel as if I've just scratched the surface. There's so much there, so it's a genealogy website packed with historical records, family trees and resources from all around the world. People describe it sometimes as the Wikipedia of ancestry, but I think it's so much more than that.

Natalie:

Familysearchorg is operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a lot of times they are referred to as the Mormons, but I believe that they prefer the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and that is a mouthful, but it's okay to refer to them as the LDS Church. I have it on the best authority. They are pretty darn passionate about family history, and so they put a lot of effort into making this resource available for everyone, even if you're not part of their church. If you've ever gone to their yearly conferences, whether virtually or in person, you know that this is just a mind-blowing experience, and I have to say that the many people I've studied with throughout the years are LDS members and they are just incredibly knowledgeable. It's a tremendous resource, so make sure that you take a look at familysearchorg.

Natalie:

Okay, so that is the end of our brand new helpful hint section, and now let's have a brief discussion about Chapter 5, living in the Past. So welcome again to Chapter 5, living in the Past. And when we closed last time, the conflict in the family was really becoming apparent that this woman, the main character, zara, who was just going about her life, living it and not exactly superficial, but not given to a whole lot of introspection. She's faced with loss, her father dies and now she's faced with a history that she never knew she had. And all of that, especially walking through grief, can change everything about how you perceive your life. For example, in her life, the job that she was tolerating all of a sudden became unbearable. And that would have probably happened whether the family history came her way or not, because grief is a difficult journey, but it also casts a light on what's not working in a life and what one's priorities are. It often does anyway, and everyone's journey of grief is different. A lot of people are not given to introspection and I don't understand it, but I know it's a fact. So I have to allow for the fact that people just don't process things the same way. So you have to allow for a variety of approaches to this journey.

Natalie:

It was interesting for the character to be able to have this opportunity to stop and step back and look at life. So far, we just normally don't do that in a given day because we're just trying to get through a given day, but the strange gift of grief is that it does. I said stop dead in her tracks, and I didn't mean to use that descriptor, but in a sense you stop dead because death is there and death is always there. Death is our permanent companion, whether we like that or not, and so when a loss occurs, it reminds us that there's only going to be more loss. So how do we deal with that? How do we look at that? There are a lot of choices, like denial and things like that.

Natalie:

But she is at a point in her life where a significant character is removed from the stage of her life and now she has to look at everything again and reassess and figure out how to move forward in life, and Zara is one of those people who, when faced with mounting difficulties in life, one of her coping mechanisms which is not that effective is pretending that they didn't happen. But what's happening now, with all these things coming at her her father's death, the revelation of her family history now she's feeling as if she's hemmed in by life. And what will she do? And as she spends more and more time on that particular website that's devoted to the Eastland disaster, she keeps looking at these images of what happened and then the images at the morgue, and it is very difficult for her to absorb all this history that is a part of her family, whether she knew it or not. That history was affecting her entire maternal line, and now she has to figure out what to do next, because there's no roadmap, there's no guidebook for this, and she also looks at her own life and figures that a lot of the decisions she made to do what she did were based on partial information, and she has to go back and try to reclaim a life and a history that she never had. She felt like an outsider all of her life, but could it be that she is very much like this missing group of people who she had no access to until this moment. And those are painful questions when you realize you might have made a decision life decisions with partial evidence, with partial conclusions, and face it. It's really hard to admit that you might be wrong. And it's the most empowering, wonderful thing too, to admit you're wrong.

Natalie:

And the main character, zara, does not have the luxury of time. Time, in a sense, ran out for her long ago, and so what she decided to do is to say yes. So I want to pause just for a second or more and ask if you were faced with a similar type of dilemma that you know, by saying yes to the journey it would upset your entire life would you say yes and go forward? This character did say yes, but it wasn't as if she was very courageous. It's just that she felt like she had no choice. But in a sense, that's not the case. She could always say no, but no would have been so uncomfortable that she had to go with the momentum. It never is convenient, when these situations come into your life, to change it. So, in the middle of chapter 5, Zara is super excited about what is about to happen. She's excited about the fact that she has uncovered an entire, what seems like an entire nation of people that she's related to. She's both saddened and perplexed by the family's connection to the Eastland disaster and the deep roots that she had in Chicago as well as Western Wisconsin, which again was not very far from where she relocated. So there is so much spinning around inside her head. But then she steps back and I'm quoting from the book now.

Natalie:

Zahra wondered what was wrong with Martha's surviving brothers and sisters. Did they ever contact her mother when their sister Zahra's grandmother passed away at such a young age, leaving a baby behind? And that has been a question that I have not been able to answer in the book or in my life. When my grandmother died in 1934, she had several brothers and sisters who were all young adults, who were still living in Chicago. A grandmother died in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and I know travel at that point was difficult, but I always wondered did they ever check up on her or did they try to see her? Or what happened here? Was there ever any communication after their sister's death? This I don't know.

Natalie:

It would seem the answer is very minimal, and so that was the other strange thing that this side of the family decided to not be involved with my mother, with Zahra's mother, same thing and so it's really easy from this vantage point, with so little information about what actually happened, to say what was wrong with those people. Why were they so inconsiderate and even cruel? I don't know that that's helpful because it's like, again, these people did not have assistance in terms of coping with life after their father died, after their baby sister died and after Martha was killed. They just had to go on with their lives. How did they go on with their lives?

Natalie:

I have very little information about that, but I do know that my widowed great grandmother, the mother of all these children, had several mental breakdowns after my Aunt Martha was killed and recovery. I'm not sure she ever really recovered and there's a lot I did not put in the book about her life, which was also equally tragic after this event, only because there was so much I already had in the book and there's some of it that I can't quite validate, but it's pretty awful. And so there was nobody there to. She was the glue, and then what happened to the glue and the family? Well, she just lost her ability to connect. So I think everyone was in a real state of crisis, of loss, of lack of center, of lack of direction.

Natalie:

Again, I don't know, but from this vantage point, these many years later, was so minimal information that I have about this branch of my family? That's what it looks like. So back to my great grandmother. She had a terrible time coping, if you could call that coping. Did she get support and help? Probably not in the way that you and I would define support and help. I mean most likely she did not, and her condition, of course, affected the rest of her children, the rest of her family. So everyone was treading water and did all of those relatives? Did they have the space and the room and the ability in their lives to absorb another tragedy, the loss of their sister and now the prospect of maybe having to take on their sister's baby? Could they do that? Probably not.

Natalie:

So as time passed and it does take time to get perspective I have a lot of empathy toward this branch of my family and even though at first glance I was angry with them and I thought what's wrong with you people, later I realized I did not have the complete story to make that kind of judgment. I wasn't around in 1915 when this happened, so that's the place where I am with them. So that's the one thing that this chapter starts to bring up all kinds of questions about everything. And so what's also happening in Zara's professional life is that her ability to tolerate her job is not there anymore as the result of all these currences in her personal life, and she's staying up all night going through this family history thing. Now she's staying up all night looking at this website about the Eastland, and her whole life is in disarray. And this very much parallels what happened in my life at that point. And if I could have at that point, stopped working and just focused in on everything that was happening and learned to cope with all the grief and everything else that I was learning, I would have. But like everybody else, I had to make a living, and that was also the quandary faced by the main character. She has to make a living, that she wants to escape, this prison that she feels she's in. So I'm going to read a small section from the book.

Natalie:

Morning came too soon, but instead of rushing to the office, zara planted herself at the kitchen table again. Why is this so hard? Why am I rattled to the core? This event and this woman are so intimately bonded to me, yet so out of reach. There must be some explanation. Her emotions ran wild and in multiple directions, inhaling glee and exhaling despair.

Natalie:

And later in that portion of the book, zara calls her mother to tell her about Pearl, the Eastland and Aunt Martha. And I should be clear that here's where Zara's mother and my own mother are quite different. Zara's mother is very much living in the left side of her brain and she has difficulty coping with emotions. And so here comes Zara calling her mother in Cleveland. Zara's in St Paul and Zara's much more excitable and much more emotional and she shares all of this information with her mother. And she's rattling this stuff off and I will continue reading from the book. And her mother became silent and Zara said well, what do you think of this mom? I don't know what to think, said Helena.

Natalie:

When I was a kid I went to Chicago for the first and only time to visit Pearl. Didn't you talk about this stuff, about family history? Said Zara. Pearl was 13 years older than I was and, for all intents and purposes, was a stranger, said her mom. Traveling over 500 miles back then wasn't easy. When I met her for the first time she was about 30 years old and married. They had just adopted baby Johnny and she told me about a ferry boat disaster where my mother's sister was killed.

Natalie:

But I wasn't interested. I was a kid, I never knew my mother and I was just getting to know my half sister, so it seemed unreal. So what's it like learning this? I don't know what to think. Repeated Helena. There's so much I never knew, and that's where we leave it for now. There's so much she never knew. See you next time.

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