Henry Frauenthal article online

This month’s feature from VOYAGE archives is now available in pdf format. Please visit link at the right side of the page (PAGES) for July’s feature by Michael Poirier.

Services for Millvina Dean

 According to her wishes, services for Millvina Dean were private, and her ashes will be scattered at sea at a later date. If desired, you can donate to her designated charity, the Royal National Lifeboat Institute.

 Here is a link to that group’s site, and you should find information on donating to them under the “How to Support Us” tab at the top of the page.  http://www.rnli.org.uk/

Voyage 68-Coming Soon!

Here are just some of the stories

you’ll fi nd in Voyage 68,

scheduled for mailing June 22nd:

• World mourns the passing of Titanic’s last survivor

Obituary for Millvina Dean

• Millvina

A touching tribute to Millvina by TIS Historian John P. Eaton

Exclusive:

• Titanic survivor tells story nearly 60 years later

Mary Conover Lines was 16 years old when she watched Titanic sink

beneath the North Atlantic. Fifty-eight years later, she told her story to the

Topsfield Historical Society. TIS is pleased to present the

exclusive transcript of that historical narrative.

• Philadelphia hosts Society’s 20th anniversary

A written and pictorial review of TIS’s 2009 convention

• TIS member provides impetus for relocating Titanic plaque

Postal worker plaque now prominently displayed, thanks in part to TIS

member Brian Ticehurst

• A Titanic visit nearly a mile high

TIS President Charles Haas shares Titanic in Idaho

• Liners at War – Part Two

Cedric, Celtic, Ceramic, Cevic, Cymric, Cretic, Georgic and Justicia

Messages of Condolence

 

In the past 24 hours, many messages of sympathy and condolence have arrived in the email box of Titanic International Society. If you wish to leave a short message, or to share a memory or photograph please sign the condolence book which can be found on the far right side top of the home page of this site.  (Condolences and Memories Book)  or you may click on this link to reach the book http://titanicinternational.wordpress.com/condolences-and-memories-book-miss-millvina-dean-1912-2009 Please type in the Leave a Reply box. Photographs may be sent to Revdma@aol.com.  Please specify any photo credits.  Messages will be copied and sent to the family of Miss Dean.

Messages will not immediately appear, this generally takes  an hour .

One year ago

May 30, 2008 A Sweet Memory

The words to this old song by the late Jim Reeves could well be describing the feelings all who met Miss Dean experienced.

I love you because you understand dear
Every single thing I try to do
You’re always there to lend a helping hand dear
I love you most of all because you’re you

No matter what the world may say about me
I know your love will always see me through
I love you for the way you never doubt me, But most of all I love you
cause you’re you

I love you because my heart is lighter
Every time I’m walking by your side
I love you because the future’s brighter
The door to happiness you opened wide

No matter what the world may say about me
I know your love will always see me through
I love you for a hundred thousand reasons
But most of all I love you ‘cause you’re you

World mourns loss of last Titanic survivor

As news of the death of Millvina Dean has been released by the media this afternoon, Titanic societies around the world have received contacts from the Press wishing more information, and messages of sadness from all those who knew her and many from those who never met her. 

Funeral arrangements have not yet been made public although the wishes of Miss Dean in this regard are known and will be honored.  It may be a comfort for many to know that Miss Dean spent her last day happily with family in the sunshine, and passed away in her sleep sometime last night.  She had returned to the nursing home on Friday after being released from the hospital after a bout with pneumonia. and was said to be in good spirits and making a recovery. ABC and NBC news for Sunday night 6:30 p.m. presented photographs and film footage of an interview with Miss Dean.  Below is the most recent AP release:

 Last Survivor of Titanic Dies in England

by Jill Lawless

 LONDON

(May 31) — Millvina Dean, who as a baby was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat in the frigid North Atlantic, died Sunday, having been the last survivor of 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic.She was 97 years old, and she died where she had lived — in Southampton, England, the city her family had tried to leave behind when it took the ship’s ill-fated maiden voyage, bound for America.

Death Comes on 98th Anniversary of Launch of Famous Ship

 

She died in her sleep early Sunday, her friend Gunter Babler told the Associated Press. It was the 98th anniversary of the launch of the ship that was billed as “practically unsinkable.”

Babler said Dean’s longtime companion, Bruno Nordmanis, called him in Switzerland to say staff at Woodlands Ridge Nursing Home in Southampton discovered Dean in her room Sunday morning. He said she had been hospitalized with pneumonia last week but she had recovered and returned to the home.

A staff nurse at the nursing home said late Sunday that no one would comment until administrators came on duty Monday morning.

Dean just over 2 months old when the Titanic hit an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912. The ship sank in less than three hours.Dean was one of 706 people — mostly women and children — who survived. Her father was among the 1,517 who died.

 Babler, who is head of the Switzerland Titanic Society, said Dean was a “very good friend of very many years.”"I met her through the Titanic society but she became a friend and I went to see very every month or so,” he said.

 The pride of the White Star line, the Titanic had a mahogany-paneled smoking room, a swimming pool and a squash court. But it did not have enough lifeboats for all of its 2,200 passengers and crew. Dean’s family were steerage passengers setting out from the English port of Southampton for a new life in the United States. Her father had sold his pub and hoped to open a tobacconists’ shop in Kansas City, Missouri, where his wife had relatives.

 Initially scheduled to travel on another ship, the family was transferred to the Titanic because of a coal strike. Four days out of port and about 600 kilometers (380 miles) southeast of Newfoundland, the ship hit an iceberg. The impact buckled the Titanic’s hull and sent sea water pouring into six of its supposedly watertight compartments.

 Dean said her father’s quick actions saved his family. He felt the ship scrape the iceberg and hustled the family out of its third-class quarters and toward the lifeboat that would take them to safety. “That’s partly what saved us — because he was so quick. Some people thought the ship was unsinkable,” Dean told the British Broadcasting Corp. in 1998.

Wrapped in a sack against the Atlantic chill, Dean was lowered into a lifeboat. Her 2-year-old brother Bertram and her mother Georgette also survived. “She said goodbye to my father and he said he’d be along later,” Dean said in 2002. “I was put into lifeboat 13. It was a bitterly cold night and eventually we were picked up by the Carpathia.”

 The family was taken to New York, then returned to England with other survivors aboard the rescue ship Adriatic. Dean did not know she had been aboard the Titanic until she was 8 years old, when her mother, about to remarry, told her about her father’s death. Her mother, always reticent about the tragedy, died in 1975 at age 95.

 Born in London on Feb. 2, 1912, Elizabeth Gladys “Millvina” Dean spent most of her life in the English seaside town of Southampton, Titanic’s home port. She never married, and worked as a secretary, retiring in 1972 from an engineering firm. She moved into a nursing home after breaking her hip about three years ago. She had to sell several Titanic mementoes to raise funds, prompting her friends to set up a fund to subsidize her nursing home fees. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, the stars of the film “Titanic,” pledged their support to the fund last month.

 For most of her life Dean had no contact with Titanic enthusiasts and rarely spoke about the disaster. Dean said she had seen the 1958 film “A Night to Remember” with other survivors, but found it so upsetting that she declined to watch any other attempts to put the disaster on celluloid, including the 1997 blockbuster “Titanic.”

 She began to take part in Titanic-related activities in the 1980s, after the discovery of the ship’s wreck in 1985 sparked renewed interest in the disaster. At a memorial service in England, Dean met a group of American Titanic enthusiasts who invited her to a meeting in the U.S. She visited Belfast to see where the ship was built, attended Titanic conventions around the world — where she was mobbed by autograph seekers — and participated in radio and television documentaries about the sinking.

 Charles Haas, president of the New-Jersey based Titanic International Society, said Dean was happy to talk to children about the Titanic. “She had a soft spot for children,” he said. “I remember watching was little tiny children came over clutching pieces of paper for her to sign. She was very good with them, very warm.”

 In 1997, Dean crossed the Atlantic by boat for the first time, on the QEII luxury liner, and finally visited Kansas City, declaring it “so lovely I could stay here five years.” She was active well into her 90s, but missed the commemoration of the 95th anniversary of the disaster in 2007 after breaking her hip.

Dean had no memories of the sinking and said she preferred it that way. “I wouldn’t want to remember, really,” she told The Associated Press in 1997. She opposed attempts to raise the wreck 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) from the sea bed. “I don’t want them to raise it, I think the other survivors would say exactly the same,” she said in 1997. “That would be horrible.”

 The last survivor with memories of the sinking — and the last American survivor — was Lillian Asplund, who was 5 at the time. She died in May 2006 at the age of 99. The second-last survivor, Barbara Joyce West Dainton of Truro, England, died in October 2007 aged 96.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Sad Day- May 31, 2009

 

Members and trustees of Titanic International Society mourn the passing of Miss Millvina Dean, last survivor of the Titanic disaster who passed away Sunday May 31 in her sleep.

Convention ‘09 in Philly

Several trustees were able to get clearance early Friday, May 1 to view the UNITED STATES at her pier.  The ship has been turned over to Star Cruises with the possibility of the breakers in her future.  Group efforts are underway to try to save the Big U. Visit this link to see how you may help.

http://www.ssunitedstates.org/

The Millvina Fund-Titanic’s Last Survivor

On a cold starlit night nearly 100 years ago, more than 2,200 men, women and children faced the greatest challenge of their lives. In a little more than two hours, their world — and ours — changed forever. Nearly four generations later, we recall that night, those people and the incalculable loss to humankind their passing represents. Over the years, as we attended Titanic conventions on both sides of the Atlantic, many have had the unique experience of meeting her survivors.. Despite perhaps wishing personally never to speak of the tragedy, many felt a duty to history to tell their stories again and again. Who can ever forget Eva Hart, or Edith Brown Haisman, or Frank Aks, or Ruth Becker Blanchard, or Michel Navratil, or Louise Kink Pope, or Edwina Troutt MacKenzie, holding us spellbound with their recollections of that night to remember?

 Sadly they are all gone now. Inevitably, as we knew would someday be the case, time’s passage has taken these special people, stilling their voices and distancing us from that night in April 1912. With each one’s passing, our direct connection to Titanic became ever-more tenuous. Now just one remains, Miss Millvina Dean. Sadly, the world learned last fall that this dear woman had found it necessary to offer for auction her personal keepsakes of that ill-fated voyage to assure her ongoing care in a nursing home.

The world’s Titanic societies received inquiries from their respective members and the public alike, asking, “What can we do to help?” Una Reilly of the Belfast Titanic Society, David Hill of the British Titanic Society and I began e-mailing one another, seeking to create a means for members and the world at large to help ensure that her days be filled with quality care, and that she know the esteem and the concern of thousands who recognize her now-unique place in history. We have acted, always, with her best interests at heart, with her knowledge and permission, and always with respect for her privacy and independent spirit. David, Una and I have worked together to draft an agreement which establishes an account, and a governance structure for the expenditure of all funds donated to that account, solely for the care of Titanic’s last survivor.

It is our sincere hope that in assisting Millvina, the spirit of international amity and cooperation will serve as another fitting legacy of this remarkable woman. We have forwarded the draft agreement to all the world’s Titanic societies, and we extend our hands in friendship to them, to all who have been touched by Titanic’s story, to all who have ever met a Titanic survivor, and all who know and love Millvina Dean, to contribute generously to the fund, expressing in a tangible way what this dear friend means to all of us.

Titanic International Society is pleased to announce the establishment of The Millvina Fund, in honor of Titanic’s last living survivor, Miss Millvina Dean. TIS’s trustees ask you to thoughtfully consider supporting the Millvina Fund with your voluntary contribution, large or small. The best way to send your donation will be to use the attached link to PayPal, which will automatically convert funds to British pounds sterling; checks made payable to the “Millvina Fund” also may be forwarded to the Millvina Fund, c/o Titanic International Society, P.O. Box 7007, Freehold, NJ 07728-7007; your trustees will forward these checks to Great Britain where the Fund’s account is based.

The members and trustees of Titanic International Society join others around the world in remembering the passengers and crew on this anniversary of the sinking.  A wreath has been placed over the final resting place of the great ship today from the members of TIS. 

“Never forgotten”  April 15, 1912