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Veterans tell stories about Big Fitz ...

There’s one story Hom has carried with him throughout his life and never told the author who once interrogated him about McSorley. Hom bristled at the author’s approach and didn’t want to share “the biggest bit of insight I’ve got on McSorley,” he said.

Hom told of working alongside the captain on the Armco when they passed the Fitzgerald going the other way on Lake Superior.

“McSorley looked over and said, ‘Boy, I’d hate to be on there in a big storm,’” Hom recalled. “‘They got it all worn out from years of overloading it.’ He said that five years before it sunk. He knew it was all wore out.”

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