As told to historian, Jane Garcia Rowland: “Louis Bernard Cruz was a ferry boat captain on a ferry route between Miami and Key West. Louis and another Captain would rotate on the route. One day it wasn’t his turn to take the route, but the other man called and asked him to please take his route because he was feeling sick. In those days there was no hurricane tracking or early warning system, so Louis sailed his ferry and ran into the deadly jaws of a killer hurricane.
This storm took the lives of a great number of people. No one on this boat escaped with their lives. Louis was not there the day to see the birth of his son Louis Bernard Cruz Jr. The very day he closed his eyes in death, his baby was born, probably the terror of the storm brought on Ruby’s labor.
Louis is buried in the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 Memorial Cemetery in Islamorada.
1/16/2023:
I had previously posted about my ancestor, Louis Cruz (also spelled Cruze). That story was one passed down through the family. As I read Thomas Knowles’ carefully researched book, Category 5: The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, I find more detailed (and probably more accurate) info about Louis.
According to Knowles, Cruz was actually the engineer on the ferry called Monroe County, this was the only ferry running (out of 3) spanning the missing section of the Overseas Hwy which ran from Lower Matecumbe to No Name Key when the 1935 hurricane hit and he lost his life.
Read more of the Memorial and 1935 hurricane here http://www.keyshistory.org/hurrmemorial.html
See more photos of the memorial here http://www.keyshistory.org/shelf1935hurrpage15.html
Here is a book about the storm of 1935 written by Willie Drye in 2002.
SOURCE: Research notes of Jane Garcia Rowland. Transcribed by Karen Yvonne Hamilton, 2022. PHOTO: Ancestry.com
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