TWO HARBORS — The beacon of Split Rock Lighthouse was lit Monday, after a ceremony marking 50 years since the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

For the first time in the four-decade history of the ceremony, attendance had to be capped: 2,000 tickets were sold. Family members of at least two crewmen who lost their lives on the Fitzgerald were on hand for the tribute, along with the lighthouse keeper who started the tradition in 1985.

"It's a small thing to do, but I figured I could turn the light on," Lee Radzak, Split Rock site director from 1982 to 2019, told reporters. "It just really felt good to be up there by myself, and to even get out on the lantern deck and stand there and feel what it was like on Nov. 10."

That spontaneous gesture became an annual tradition that has grown into o

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