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What if being late saved your life?

In this episode of Flower in the River, we follow the eerie ripple of that question through time.

On the morning of July 24, 1915, Tom Milton and Willard Haynes were in Chicago when the Eastland Disaster unfolded. Milton missed boarding the ship by a single minute. Haynes, a physician, arrived just as chaos overtook the riverfront and assisted at the scene.

Their connection to the disaster surfaced in 1954 when both were living in Texas. That year, the Houston Chronicle published an interview with Milton in which he mentioned the Eastland Disaster. After reading the article, Haynes wrote a letter to Milton sharing his own experience of being there that day—opening with the words:

“Stranger things have happened…”

Their names do not appear in any known accounts of the Eastland Disaster. Their stories remained overlooked—until now.

This episode is about memory, timing, transparency, and the strange ways history finds its way back. It’s also a story within a story: about family archives, investigative instincts, and the quiet dignity of men whose roles in history were left unrecorded for nearly 40 years.

Spoiler alert: the eBay item that sparked this episode is now safely archived at the Newberry Library in Chicago!

Resources

• The Actor and the Doctor: Converging Lives Post-Eastland (released July 5, 2024) featuring the detailed stories of Tom Milton and Willard Haynes.
• Newberry Library, Eastland Disaster Digital Collection

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• The opening/closing song is Twilight by 8opus
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