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Titanic survivor sells mementos to pay for care
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-17 10:32

In 1912, baby Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean and her family were steerage passengers emigrating to Kansas City, Mo., aboard the Titanic.

Four days out of port, on the night of April 14, 1912, it hit an iceberg and sank. Billed as "practically unsinkable" by the publicity magazines of the period, the Titanic did not have enough lifeboats for all 2,200 passengers and crew.

Commander P.H. Nargeolet walks away from the M.V. Royal Majesty with Millvina Dean, 84, of England at the Black Falcon Pier in Boston in this September 1, 1996 file photo. Dean, a surviver of the Titanic disaster was on board the Royal Majesty when it sailed to the site where the Titanic's maiden voyage ended 84 years ago and watched as research vessels tried to raise part of its hull to the surface. Although a cable snaped sending the hull plunging down to the ocean's floor, Dean was thrilled to be there. [Agencies]

Dean, her mother Georgetta and brother Bertram Jr. were among 706 people, mostly women and children, who were rescued by the steamship Carpathia and survived. Her father, Bertram Dean, was among more than 1,500 who died.

Dean did not know she had been aboard the Titanic until she was 8 years old, when her mother, who was about to remarry, told her about her father's death.

She has 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 a 1997 interview.

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 movies about the disaster, including the 1997 blockbuster "Titanic," starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet.

Dean began to take part in Titanic-related activities in the 1980s, and was active well into her 90s. She visited Belfast, Northern Ireland, 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.

The last American survivor of the disaster, Lillian Asplund, died in 2006 at the age of 99. Another British survivor, Barbara Joyce West Dainton, died last November at 96.

Aldridge said the "massive interest" in Titanic memorabilia shows no signs of abating. Last year, a collection of items belonging to Asplund sold for more than $175,000.

"It's the people, the human angle," Aldridge said. "You had over 2,200 men, women and children on that ship, from John Jacob Astor, the richest person in the world at the time, to a poor Scandinavian family emigrating to the States to start a new life. There were 2,200 stories."

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