To her eternal rest:Lillian Gertrud Asplund: 1906-2006

It is our sad duty to report that the last Titanic survivor with memories of the disaster has died. Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last American survivor of the 1912 sinking, was 99 years old when she died Saturday at her home in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.

Asplund was just five years old when she lost her father and three brothers -- including a fraternal twin -- on the night the "practically unsinkable" ship went down in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg.

"She went to sleep peacefully," said Ronald E. Johnson, vice president of the Nordgren Memorial Chapel in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Asplund's mother, Selma, and another brother, Felix, who was 3, also survived the Titanic sinking in the early morning of April 15, 1912.

Asplund was the last Titanic survivor with actual memories of the sinking, but she shunned publicity and rarely spoke about the events.

At least two other survivors are living, but they were too young to have memories of the disaster. Barbara Joyce West Dainton of Truro, England, was 10 months old and Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean of Southampton, England, was 2 months old.

The Asplund family had boarded the ship in Southampton, England, as third-class passengers on their way back to Worcester from their ancestral homeland, Sweden, where they had spent several years.

Asplund's mother described the sinking in an interview with the Worcester Telegram & Gazette newspaper shortly after she and her two children arrived in the city.

Selma Asplund said the family went to the Titanic's upper deck after the ship struck the iceberg.

"I could see the icebergs for a great distance around ... It was cold and the little ones were cuddling close to one another and trying to keep from under the feet of the many excited people ... My little girl, Lillie, accompanied me, and my husband said 'Go ahead, we will get into one of the other boats.' He smiled as he said it."

Because they lost all of their possessions and money, the city of Worcester held a fundraiser and a benefit concert that together brought in about $2,000 for the surviving Asplunds.

Lillian Asplund never married and worked at secretarial jobs in the Worcester area most of her life. She retired early to care for her mother, who was described as having never gotten over the tragedy.

Selma Asplund died on the 52nd anniversary of the sinking in 1964 at age 91. Felix Asplund died on March 1, 1983, at age 73.

A memorial service will be held Wednesday, Johnson said.

And then there were two:
Remaining survivors were just babies when Titanic went down

Barbara Joyce West, born May 24, 1911, boarded Titanic as a second class passenger along with her parents and her sister, Constance. The women of the family were placed in lifeboat 10, while Mr. West remained on board and perished in the sinking. The three surviving Wests returned to England on White Star's Celtic. Barbara lives in Truro, England and never talks about the disaster, saying she wants "nothing to do with the Titanic people."

Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean, born Feb. 2, 1912, was only two months old when her family boarded the Titanic as third class passengers. The family was board for Kansas City, Kansas, where Millvina's father planned to open a tobacco shop. When the evacuation of the ship began, Millvina and her mother and brother, Bertram, were placed in lifeboat 10. Her father, Bertram Frank Dean, remained on board and perished in the disaster.

Following the disaster, Georgette Dean returned to England aboard White Star's Adriatic with her young son and daughter. Millvina never married and lives in Southampton, England, the port from which she departed on Titanic on April 10, 1912. She is the youngest of the living survivors and the last survivor who attends Titanic-related events. In 1997, Millvina crossed the North Atlantic on the QE2, completing her family's interrupted journey to Kansas.