Did you see that the last survivor of the Titanic died over the weekend? Her name was Millvina Dean; she was 97. I read the AP article about her with interest—not just because she is tied to such a huge historical event, but because of the lasting effects it had on her family.
Her family boarded the Titanic with the intention of starting a tobacconist shop in Wichita (or Kansas City—depending on which source you read). Her father owned a pub in England and he sold it to open the shop, but he perished some time after lowering Millvina, who was just two months old at the time, into a lifeboat. Her two-year-old brother and their mother also survived. They were taken to New York initially and then ended up going back to England.
Millvina never married, and of course, her family never opened that tobacconist shop in Kansas City. She went on to become a secretary. She died in Southampton, England—the same place her family left to start a new life in America.
The Dean family hadn’t planned on being on the Titanic. A coal strike caused them to transfer from another boat to the Titanic.
I wonder if Millvina spent a lot of time wondering about what might have been? Would she have gotten married and had children? Would she have ended up owning and running the shop her father would have started? How would her life in general have been different in Kansas?
I think anybody would wonder such things from time to time, but from that way it sounds, Millvina settled into life in Southampton. And it seems to have suited her just fine.
