At 8:30, about 100 fishermen on Government Pier at Michigan City, Ind., were having a different experience.
Government Pier, a freestanding, island-like structure about a quarter mile from shore, was a popular spot for perch fishermen, who paid a small fee to be ferried back and forth. On the morning of June 26, fishermen on the pier who were facing north watched the storm approach for about half an hour. Suddenly, as the rain opened up in front of them, it was not water from the sky that concerned them but water from the lake itself, water that now was washing over the surface of the pier. The lake level had risen two feet in that many minutes.
There was a mad scramble for the high end of the pier as the water rose steadily. Fishing rods, tackle boxes and lunches were left to the fate of the swirling water, which finally peaked about two feet above the pier`s surface.
Because of the approaching storm, a small flotilla of boats had prepared to evacuate the anglers, but they did not expect to be rescuing the fishermen from a flood tide in the middle of the lake. Fortunately, the unnerved group was rescued without a casualty, and 25 minutes after the water had risen, it was back to normal if not lower levels.
The water that swept over Government Pier was the incident wave of the seiche.
But no word was relayed from Michigan City. No word came from the two Coast Guard vessels involved in the evacuation of Government Pier. No word came from two Coast Guardsmen who took a skiff into the lake from the South Chicago lifeboat station and reported a water level up as much as 18 inches, but back to normal when they returned at 9 a.m.
There is no doubt that the Coast Guard had enough experience with seiches to exercise more caution than it did on June 26, 1954. Though it would be some years before seiche waves in the lower Lake Michigan basin would be scientifically understood, extensive scientific knowledge on the Coast Guard`s part was not required to have considered the safety of people at other points on the lake. But no one did.
At Montrose Harbor at 9 a.m., the sun was bright, the day was hazy, the temperature approached 80 degrees. The lake surface was unusually smooth and quiet. There was no wind.
Conservation officers Herb Riederer and Harold Knight approached the east jetty, where about 50 fishermen and kibitzers–the Gabriels among them–were enjoying the good life. The officers began to check for fishing licenses, moving first down one side of the jetty, returning towards shore on the other. Frank Dopke, 58, had his all right. He fished every Saturday and Sunday morning. Nearby, Abe Gross, 65, also had his. Over the years the two had become fishing buddies, although they never met anywhere but the lakefront.
George Shours, 55, had his license, too, and this check was just one more out-of-the-ordinary event for him this morning. First he had agreed to come with his friend, Louis Yunker; then he had agreed to bring his neighbor boy
–lots of company for a man who usually fished alone. Then there had been the storm cloud; he packed up to leave and sent the kid home on the bus, watching the day clear.
Officer Riederer checked the license of Matthew Gildea, 54. Today Gildea was at the jetty for the same reason as the others who usually fished the more familiar 300-foot horseshoe pier: If bad weather came up when you were on
”the shoe” it could take you 10 minutes to get back to your car. From the jetty it was a matter of two or three.
At 9:15 Shours` neighbor boy was safely home, Jaworski`s son Joe was returning to the North Avenue pier from the bathhouse, and Stempinski`s son, Ralph, left the east jetty and walked up to the bait shop several hundred yards up the road.
Officer Riederer was about 15 feet from shore when he approached Stempinski. Now Stempinski wished he had saved himself the embarrassment instead of the price of a fishing license. Riederer told him he would have to give him a warning ticket.
Stempinski took it well enough, even though he was the only fisherman on the jetty to receive a citation. He was standing next to Riederer, his copy of the ticket in his hand, when a sudden splash, a surge of water, slopped over the feet of both men.
At first Riederer thought it was a surface wave, perhaps the wake of a boat he hadn`t seen or heard. He looked up quickly, annoyed. He saw that water covered the entire surface of the pier and was not running off like a normal wave. Instead it was rising.
”Let`s get out of here,” he said to Stempinski. He turned and jumped for shore, the ticket pad with Stempinski`s stub still in his hand.
When he reached the rocks seconds later he looked back. But Stempinski was gone. Instead of breaking for shore with Riederer, Stempinski had instinctively stooped to reach for his tackle. It was his last act. Like many survivors and victims, Stempinski had never heard the word ”seiche” in his life.
The wave roared up and over the jetty like a monstrous, hump-backed sea beast. Its great bulk crashed over the fishermen`s heads with tons of pressure, sweeping the human forage into the harbor waters. Fishing tackle and picnic gear flew in all directions, tangling people, banging into them. A futile wall of screams rose up against the deaf beast.
One man grabbed a light-tower girder with one hand and his 11-year-old daughter with the other. His feet were taken out from under him but he held on, saving their lives.
The sleepy Chester Michalik was knocked from the pier as he bent to search his minnow bucket for more bait; Kudelko barely made it to dry land, pulling himself onto the rocks from knee-deep water. He was upset about losing his tackle, but he quickly saw the real disaster unfolding around him. He helped Michalik and several others onto the rocks.
Someone shouted, pointing to a man in the water, his bald head bobbing at the surface. Kudelko spotted the man, yanked off his shoes and tossed his wallet to the now-wide-awake Michalik.
He hit the water in a running dive, was momentarily stunned by its chill. He stroked furiously to where Stempinski floated face down, grabbed his collar and began the awkward tow to shore. There was no resistance, no struggle from Stempinski. Good for me, bad for him, Kudelko thought. But hurry, hurry. The water fought his advance like a cold soup. Now he could see the rocks. But hurry, hurry–Jesus.
He was 15 feet from shore, pulling against the water, pulling against Stempinski. Suddenly, pulling at his legs. Something. He kicked in a panic. More pulling, grasping. He let go of Stempinski. He reached down to his feet, felt the underwater web of fishing line that had grabbed him, ironically a net that probably included line from Stempinski`s own illegal pole.
He told himself not to panic. He could free himself with one dive below the surface. He hoped.
Meanwhile, close to shore as a result of Kudelko`s labors, Stempinski was brought in by others. But it was too late. He was identified by Officer Riederer`s ticket, which was found in his pocket just as his son returned from the bait shop to see what the commotion was all about.
Kudelko had found his excitement. He was strong enough to free himself from the jeopardy of fishing lines, and he received accolades for his brave attempt to rescue Stempinski. Of course, his alibi for skipping work was blown, and less than two weeks later he was fired for missing work to attend mandatory sessions of the coroner`s jury, twice continued because all the bodies had not yet been recovered.
As the monstrous wave slid across the pier, Riederer saw a heavy-set woman who had been lounging on the pier against a low-slung wood-and-canvas back support, her back to the wave.
Riederer watched as she was lifted gracefully from the pier, still upright in her back support, and carried regally on the hump of the leviathan, which had now burst over the pier and into the harbor with its full force. She rode scores of yards into the harbor entrance on the 8-to-10-foot hump as though it were fully in her command, including the moment that, as if on her signal, she dismounted onto the surface of the swollen harbor and disappeared into the wild black water.
The end came quickly for Mae Gabriel. She couldn`t swim a stroke. When her body was recovered later that morning, she was still clasped in the embrace of her canvas saddle.
Riederer stood momentarily transfixed by what he had seen. Then he wheeled and dashed for the road where he commandeered a car to the bait shop and put in the first call for help.
Ed Gabriel disappeared unobserved, his last moments as private as his preceding ones had been public, a life filled with family and friends. Although he was a good swimmer–he had been fanatical about teaching his children to swim–the turbulence in the harbor was a hell you could not survive on skill alone: You had to be on your luck.
His body was recovered nine days later, on the 4th of July, one day after he and Mae had planned to remarry at their son`s wedding.
Thirty seconds of warning might have saved the Gabriels and certainly would have been enough for the unlucky Stempinski. But it hadn`t come.
As for Frank Dopke, George Shours, Matthew Gildea and Abe Gross, little is known of their last moments.
Earlier, after the Jaworski party had returned to their spot on North Avenue pier when the weather appeared to clear, they marveled at the exceptional calmness of the water. The lake was like a huge pool of glycerine merging at the indistinct horizon with the hazy sky. Scenes like this enraptured John Jaworski, were why he loved to be outside, when the forces of nature seemed to hang in dynamic balance, as though in a framed landscape.
But there was a force he could not feel, a terrible beauty he could not know. It hurtled toward him through the glassy lake at speeds of 35 to 50 miles an hour.
Suddenly the frame tilted, the landscape exploded. Jaworski was doomed.
His son Joe said: ”All I know . . . we looked, it was just like instant elevation . . . and there was not as much a wave as I remember as that instant surge of water like over a dam . . . That pier became like a dam bursting.”
Jaworski`s back was to the wave as he dangled his feet over the shore side of the pier. It knocked him easily into the sudden whirlpool between the beach and the curving pier.
The rest of the Jaworski party, son Joe, a son-in-law and the neighbor, were able to grab hold of jutting mesh and steel bars or someone who had such a hold. They were quickly back on the pier. With 10 seconds of warning John Jaworski could have turned around and grabbed for his life also.
As soon as officials learned what had happened north of Navy Pier, they quickly sent word to evacuate the southern beaches and piers, where the effects of the seiche both preceded and followed the reflected wave at Montrose. People were evacuated from South Side piers in time to avoid a slowly rising backwash that reached about two feet in depth.
North of Montrose the reflected wave also was very large, breaking over an 8-foot sea wall at Loyola University. At the Rogers Park beach a lifeguard somehow saw the wave coming and cleared the water of the few bathers present, and between Farwell and Estes Streets the water washed 200 feet from the shoreline and toppled two quarter-ton lifeguard towers.
In all, eight bodies were recovered from the lake, seven men and one woman. Except for one bachelor, all left children.
On July 6, the day the last victim`s body was found, Gordon E. Dunne, chief of the Chicago weather-service office, observed a squall line similar to the one that preceded the seiche of June 26. He then issued the first seiche warning ever for the Chicago lakefront.
When the squall line hit Chicago, its effects were more dramatic than the rapid passing of dark skies on June 26. There were violent thunderstorms, two inches of rain in 12 hours and tornados in southern Wisconsin.
There was also a tremendous seiche. Capt. Henry P. Michaels, Belmont harbormaster for 20 years, said the water rose higher than he had ever seen it. He reported it was much more severe than the June 26 rise of about six feet in the harbor and that it moved parked cars in the harbor`s south parking lot.
In a report to his chief at the national weather bureau regarding the June seiche, Gordon Dunne wrote in 1954, ”. . . every seiche that has come to my attention during my 15 years in Chicago has occurred in connection with a squall line, a pressure jump and in the early morning or forenoon.”
If this was so, why was there no seiche warning issued with the small-craft warning at 5 a.m. on June 26, 1954?
