By Joan Goodchild, Community Reporter
Shrewsbury – The Shrewsbury Historical Society is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic with a special exhibit. A case of memorabilia about the storied ship, as well as famous survivor Lillian Asplund, will be on display through the summer.
Asplund, originally from Worcester, spent many years of her life as a Shrewsbury resident and was living in the town at the time of her death, at age 99, in 2006.
According to Historical Society curator Linda Davis, many people remember seeing Asplund around town and she was known for her ties to the tragedy.
“As a child, my family went to the same church that Lillian attended and my mother said,
“Do you see that person?”” Davis, a lifelong resident of Shrewsbury, recalled. “After she explained to me who Lillian was, I spent every Sunday staring at her in amazement!”
Davis pointed out that Asplund was not only one of the last three remaining survivors of the ill-fated ship, which sunk off the coast of Newfoundland April 14, 1912, but she was the last American survivor of the disaster. The two other remaining survivors were from England, but Davis noted they were babies when they were on the Titanic.
“Lillian was 5 when she was on the ship,” Davis said, “so she would have remembered the panic, the cold, being put on the life boat, and her father and brothers not getting on.”
Indeed, Asplund, her mother and a younger brother were the only members of the Asplund family who survived the night the Titanic went down after hitting an iceberg. Asplund, along with her parents and four brothers, were third-class passengers on the ship and had boarded in England for a trip to New York. The family was returning to the United States after living in Sweden for several years.
When the ship struck the iceberg at 11:40 p.m., Asplund is reported to have recounted that her father, Carl, woke the family and assisted his wife and two youngest children with passage onto a lifeboat. Carl, along with Lillian's three other brothers, did not get onto a lifeboat and did not survive the icy waters of the North Atlantic after the ship sunk. One of the brothers lost was Lillian's twin, said Davis.
“The only body that was ever recovered was her father's,” she said. “He was identified because he had the tickets in his pocket.”
The surviving Asplunds were rescued by the RMS Carpathia and returned to the United States. Lillian lived with her mother and surviving brother, Felix, for most of her life. She died in her Shrewsbury home in May 2006, only a few months shy of her 100th birthday.
Davis said the exhibit, which is free and open to the public on Saturday mornings, has drawn many curious visitors.
“I think people are just enthralled with the Titanic in general,” Davis said. ?”It is just one of those fascinating stories.”