[Deathwatch] Millvina Dean, last survivor of Titanic, 97

[Deathwatch Central]

Millvina Dean dies at 97; last Titanic survivor

She was about 2 months old when she sailed on the ocean liner in 1912.
She, her mother and brother were saved. Her father was among those who
went down with the ship.

June 1, 2009

Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the legendary ocean liner Titanic,
which sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912 after striking an iceberg
in the North Atlantic, died Sunday. She was 97.

She died at a nursing home near Southampton, England, the port where
she and her family boarded the ship, according to Charles Haas, the
president of the Titanic International Society. Her death came on the
98th anniversary of the launching of the Titanic, on May 31, 1911.

"She was a remarkable, sparkling lady," Haas told The Times on Sunday.
"She knew her place in history and was always willing to share her
story with others, especially children. She was the last living link to
the story."

Dean was about 8 weeks old when she and her family set sail, third
class, on the luxury ocean liner on April 10, 1912. Five days later,
she was among about 700 passengers and crew who were rescued off the
coast of Newfoundland. She and her mother, Georgetta, 32, and her
brother Bertram, 23 months old, were put into lifeboats. Her father,
Bertram, 27, stayed on board the ship and was among more than 1,500
passengers and crew members who went down with the Titanic.

She had no memory of the disaster, but at age 8 her mother told her
what had happened. "It was so awful for her that she never wanted to
speak about it," Dean said of her mother in a 2002 interview with the
Irish News. Georgetta Dean suffered severe headaches every day for
years after the ship's sinking.

Before the family left England, Bertram and Georgetta Dean sold the pub
they owned in London. They planned to sail to New York City and
continue on to Kansas City, Mo., where they were going to open a
tobacco shop.

They did not expect to travel on the Titanic but had booked on another
ship that was also owned by White Star Line. A national coal strike led
to a cancellation, and they were offered a place on the Titanic as an
alternative.

On their fourth night at sea, April 14, the family was awakened by a
jolt when the ship sideswiped the iceberg that cut into the ship.

Bertram Dean went to see what was wrong and returned to tell his wife
to dress the children warmly and take them to the lifeboat deck.

"I think it was my father who saved us," Dean said in 2002. "So many
other people thought the Titanic would never sink, and they didn't
bother. My father didn't take a chance."

He reassured his wife, "I'll be along later," Dean later learned.
Bertram Dean died when the Titanic sank about 2:20 a.m. on April 15.

In the confusion of the evacuation, Dean and her mother were separated
from her brother, who was put in a different lifeboat. They were
reunited on the Carpathia, the Cunard ocean liner that was the first to
respond to the Titanic's distress signals and took on all the lifeboat
passengers.

Dean, her mother and brother sailed to New York City on the rescue ship
and spent several weeks in a hospital. Georgetta Dean then took her
children home to England, sailing on the Adriatic. Passengers who knew
what the family had been through lined up to hold baby Millvina, the
youngest survivor of the Titanic. To keep the line moving, a ship's
officer ordered that no one could hold the baby for more than 10
minutes.

Asked what difference the incident made in her life, Dean was never
sentimental. "It changed my life because I would have been American now
instead of English," she told the Associated Press in 2002 without
further comment.

Georgetta Dean took her children to live with her parents in their home
near Southampton. Millvina and her brother were educated with help from
a Titanic Relief Fund established in England for the surviving family
members of victims of the wreck.

Dean attended secretarial school. During World War II, she moved to
London and worked as a mapmaker for the British Army. She later
returned to Southampton and was a secretary at an engineering firm. For
many years, she lived in a house in nearby New Forest. She never
married.

Born on Feb. 12, 1912, Dean might easily have gone through life without
telling anyone that she was a passenger on the Titanic. She ignored the
books, movies, clubs, websites and submarine tours of the shipwreck
after it was found in 1985, 12,500 feet under the surface of the North
Atlantic.

Her anonymity ended in 1987 when she attended a memorial service in
Southampton on the 75th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.
Titanic historian and author Don Lynch then invited her to speak at a
Titanic Historical Society convention in Boston the following year.

"Suddenly everyone knew my name," Dean later recalled. She became a
frequent guest at Titanic-related events, was interviewed on radio and
television, and was inundated with letters from inquirers. "The trouble
is, they write me pages," she said of the letter writers in a 1998
interview with NBC News.

In 1998, Dean finally completed the sea voyage from Southampton to New
York City that she had set out to make 86 years earlier. She traveled
on the Queen Elizabeth II, compliments of Michael Rudd, a Titanic
enthusiast and travel agent in Missouri. He and Dean gave a
presentation together during the voyage.

"She hadn't been on a ship since 1912," Rudd said in a 2007 interview
with The Times. "People crowded around her, they just wanted to touch
her."

As part of that same trip, Dean went to Missouri to see the house where
her parents planned to begin their new life, an experience she
described as eerie.

She refused to watch "Titanic," the Academy Award-winning 1997 movie,
even though she was invited to a screening with England's Prince
Charles. "I'd wonder what my father was doing, what he did," she said,
referring to the terrible last scenes of the film.

Dean kept up her Titanic engagements into her 90s, often with her
"permanent escort," Bruno Nordmanis, about 10 years younger, to
accompany her. They traveled together on the Queen Elizabeth II.

In 2008, two years after breaking a hip, Dean arranged for a London
auction house to sell some of her Titanic mementos to help pay her
nursing home fees. The sale raised $53,906.

Dean's mother died in 1975, at 95. Her brother died in 1992 on the 80th
anniversary of the ship's sinking. He was 81. Dean is survived by two
nephews and two nieces.



Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary