The Making of a Hero: The bend that took down the M.E. Norman riverboat
Willow mat revetments along the Mississippi River. (Courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
“The Making of a Hero” is a series of stories marking the centennial of Tom Lee’s 1925 Mississippi River rescue that saved the lives of 32 passengers on the capsized M.E. Norman riverboat.
The M.E. Norman’s planned destination on May 8, 1925, was the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River just below the Tennessee-Mississippi state line.
The set of turns in the river just south of Memphis has claimed boats before and was known for strong currents. It has changed in the century since the M.E. Norman capsized and sank to the Mississippi’s muddy bottom.
At the Arkansas town of Pinckney was a set of river revetments — of particular interest to the group of engineers on board and a hot topic of conversation in the 1920s among the different government bodies seeking to stabilize a river with a reputation for instability and treacherous currents.
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Tom Lee Centennial Tom Lee M.E. Norman U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Subscriber OnlyThank you for supporting local journalism.
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
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