News and Updates

Chicago, Illinois -- Today is a very joyous day for millions of baseball enthusiasts: it’s MLB Opening Day! Today brings the first of many happy, exciting, and, at times, anxiety ridden, days for fellow baseball enthusiasts. While millions of baseball fans cheer for their favorite team and chow down on hundreds of thousands of ballpark dogs, EDHS celebrates the 117th season of MLB by commemorating the eleven players of the Amateur Baseball Managers' clubs who lost their lives in the Eastland Disaster.

Chicago, Illinois -- Eastland: A New Musical, written by Andrew White, premiered in 2012 at the Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago. In 2015, the Renegade Theater Company in Duluth, Minnesota, re-staged it. Now, after five years of diligence and perseverance, the EDHS is nearing the day when it will promote and license the Eastland musical across the country.

Chicago, Illinois -- Mary Louise Christiany, a 25-year-old Western Electric employee, and her best friend, Rose Skohan, were standing on the upper deck of the Eastland when the ship began to list.

Chicago, Illinois -- L.W. Miller, John Peterson, E.H. Peterson, William Lessuenhop, E.W. Sladkey, and Anna Bohn (pictured above) survived the Eastland Disaster by climbing over the stern on the dry starboard side of the ship. 

Chicago, Illinois -- Hundreds of women lost their lives in the Eastland Disaster, accounting for nearly 60% of the fatalities. The effect of those lives lost rippled through homes and families. Scores of women's lives were devastated from the resulting aftermath: homes and families were left without a husband, father, and breadwinner; infant, adolescent, and young adult daughters grew up without a father, mother, or both; single mothers lost wage-earning children; wives who did their best to cope with husbands who suffered from undiagnosed PTSD; and many other categories of women who suffered and struggled to make the best of a horrific situation.