I'm 59 years old. I was 40 when first signed on with ET. When I was born, survivors who were still around were thick as fleas. By the time I retired from the Navy, there were several left, all of them were very old, and only one or two even had the blurriest possible memory of the ship.
If some of you guys have Facebook, I don't really keep any secrets. My friends include researchers and expedition members, enthusiasts and also some relatives and even descendants of the people who were lucky enough to make it to New York alive. When you listen to their stories, you can see how something which is a historical abstract to the rest of us still effects them to this day. To people like Shelley Binder, Ilya Murdoch McVey, Julie Hedgepath Williams, Dr. Douglas Willingham, Cliff Ismay, and Helen Banzinger, it's family history and it's personal.
Whenever I'm dealing with Titanic, I make a point of being very mindful of that.