I remember when the fascination began…I was 10 years old in 1958 and an inveterate reader.  I read Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember. Thus began a 50+ year romance with the Titanic. It literally changed my way of looking at the world.

I was adopted at the age of three days by parents born in 1899 and 1906; thus, my father remembered the Titanic’s impact on the world - even the impact on a poor sharecropper’s son from a family of twelve in the back country of North Carolina.

I received my teaching degree in 1969 and ran full tilt into a group of “reluctant” eighth grade history students in Greensboro, NC - they were reluctant to be there and I was reluctant to have them there!  I, out of desperation, designed a 3-week thematic unit around the Titanic combining science (study of oceanography); math (calculating speeds and winds); philosophy (new technologies that “flew in the face of God”); psychology (survival behaviors); language arts (journal writing) and reading and viewing skills using Lord’s book and the film…16 mm variety! This became my salvation.  We did learning activity packets geared to my gifted, as well as my not-so-gifted, group – all 180 of them.  At the end of the school year during evaluations, they all said that the Titanic unit was their favorite.

When the opportunity presented itself to visit the site of the sinking of the Titanic in 1996, and possibly watch a piece of history be retrieved by the Discovery Channel, how could I turn away?  I wanted to experience first hand the site where the world of courage, fear, love and cowardice collided with an act of Nature.

The sinking was a watershed event - a technological as well as a religious landmark.  One needs to explore all aspects of the social, economic, historic, scientific, and artistic legacies of this “Ship of Dreams”.
 
I have since 1996 spoken to over 200+ groups ranging in age from kindergartners to 102 years old about “our lady”.  I can speak to a Rotary Club for 20 minutes or spend a week talking about her at a symposium for the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching.  I have yet to meet anyone who is not, to some degree, fascinated by our “lady”.

We recently built a new home and it has a Titanic room dedicated to the books and memorabilia we have collected over the years.  There is nothing of truly extrinsic value, but the intrinsic value I see when a child or an adult touches a piece of coal from the Titanic is awe-inspiring.

This piece of coal left Southampton, England on April 10, 1912 in the coal bunkers of the Titanic; sailed halfway across the Atlantic and on the night of April 14-15, 1912, sank two and one-half miles to the bottom of the ocean.  This piece of coal lay there for over 80+ years before it was brought to the surface and sold to Melinda Ratchford in Belmont, North Carolina, USA.  I have ended each of my Titanic presentations by telling the participants, “I will never own any thing from the Titanic except this. You will now get to touch a piece of the Titanic’s history.”  I pass the coal around and all ages touch it with reverence and care and return it to me very tenderly.

My husband and I are bringing our three grandchildren (ages 12, 10 and 7) to Belfast in March to see her beginnings…her birthplace so to speak.  I’ve been to Southampton from where she sailed; to Queenstown; to the North Atlantic where she rests 2.5 miles under the water; to Halifax, Nova Scotia where 300 of her souls lie in repose; and to New York harbor where she should have glamorously and successfully ended her maiden voyage.

As we were walking out of the memorial service in 1996 held at the site of the sinking, I ended up walking with the Catholic priest who had helped with the service.  I asked him, “Father, do you think there is any significance attached to the fact there were 1500 people who died that night at this spot and there are 1500 of us on this ship tonight?”  He said with a twinkle in his eye, “If you are referring to reincarnation, that I cannot tell you.”  Then with a solemnity I shall never forget, he said, “But I do know that we helped lay to rest the souls of the dead tonight.”

I’m not certain what my mission in life is other than having been a teacher for over 40 years, but I also know that the Titanic has had a place in my heart even longer.  I want my grandchildren to understand the 2,228+ stories about these people and never to forget that all the people on the Titanic were once as alive as we are this minute.

It is such a tribute to the Irish people that Belfast has continued to honor the legacy of this magnificent liner.  When asking with whom to speak in Belfast about “our lady”, it was unanimously Susie Millar. I look forward to hearing the story from Susie who has made the Titanic story her calling also.