Eleanor Shuman, one of the last half-dozen survivors of the sinking of the Titanic, died March 7 at a hospital near her home in Elgin, Ill. She was 87.
Her strongest memory of that disaster: the screams.
Mrs. Shuman, whose original name was Johnson, was just 18 months old when the Titanic went down in the early hours of April 15, 1912, with the loss of more than 1,500 lives.
But as one of 705 survivors, she had a tale to tell and told it quite often over the years. For the most part, Mrs. Shuman lived a fairly ordinary life in the Chicago suburbs. A native of St. Charles, Ill., where her father, Oscar Johnson, was a newspaper editor, she moved to nearby Elgin, working for a while at the Elgin Watch Co. before becoming a telephone operator. She retired in 1962.
Her husband, Delbert Shuman, an International Harvester engineer, died in 1981, they had been married for 47 years.
Mrs. Shuman kept her memories of the Titanic alive. The living room of her tidy house in Elgin had what she called her Titanic corner, including books, a painting of the massive liner and a photograph showing her and her brother Harold at the New York premiere of the Titanic movie "A Night to Remember"in 1958. More recently, Mrs. Shuman had acquired photographs showing her and James Cameron, director of the current hit movie, Titanic, at its Chicago premiere in December. As the only Titanic survivor Cameron met, Mrs. Shuman got royal treatment.
She saw the movie three times, first at a screening with critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, then at the premiere and later at a theatre in Elgin. She said she cried each time.
The movie and the attendant publicity made Mrs. Shuman such a sought after celebrity that she changed her telephone number to an unlisted one after getting as many as 10 calls a day from peolpe wanting to her her recollections about the Titanic or simply to speak with someone who had survived the disaster.
But she recalled very little about the fateful night.
Most of the details she related over the years came from her mother, Alice, but Mrs. Shuman insisted she recalled the screams and the sight from a great height of a sea of hands reaching up for her from a lifeboat below.
Mrs. Shuman said her voyage on the Titanic came about by accident. She, her mother and her four year old brother, Harold, had gone to Finland to visit her mother's dying father and other relatives and were on their way back to the United States when they stopped in England and discovered that their passage on another ship had been canceled because of a coal miner's strike.
Learning that the Titanic had room, the family, along with two teen-aged girls they had met in Sweden, hopped a boat and a train to Southampton and bought third-class tickets just hours before Titanic sailed.
Drawing on her mother's account, Mrs. Shuman recalled that at first the disaster had provided a moment of recreation for the third-class passengers. When the Titanic struck an iceberg, she said, tons of ice fell onto the deck outside their cabin door. As her mother, the Swedish girls and others playfully kicked the ice around, an officer shooed them back into their cabins, saying the ship would get under way again shortly.
A little later, she said, the steward who had waited on them in the dining room and apparently taken a liking to the little group knocked on their door and escorted them to the boat deck. Her mother, carrying her daughter in her arms, was helped into a lifeboat, and little Harold, who had been carried to the deck by one of the Swedish girls, was dropped down into the boat after them. The other Swedish girl had gotten into another lifeboat and survived, she said, but the one that had been holding Harold went down with the ship.
Theirs, she said was the last lifeboat to leave the Titanic. Five hours later they were picked up by the ship Carpathia and taken to New York. Until a few years ago when she visited her son, then living in Florida, Mrs. Shuman had not seen the Atlantic since 1912. In 1996 she sailed back to the site of the disaster for a memorial service.
With Mrs. Shuman's death, there are now five known living Titanic survivors. Karen Kamuda of the Titanic Historical Society in Indian Orchard, Massachussetts, said they are: Barbara West and Millzina Dean of England, Michael Navratil of France, and Lillian Asplund and Winnifred Tongerloo of the United States.
Mrs Shuman, whose brother died in 1968, is survived by a son, Earl, of St. Charles, Illinois; two sisters, Irene Van Thournout of St. Charles and Ester Rudder of Connecticut; and two grandchildren.
Her strongest memory of that disaster: the screams.
Mrs. Shuman, whose original name was Johnson, was just 18 months old when the Titanic went down in the early hours of April 15, 1912, with the loss of more than 1,500 lives.
But as one of 705 survivors, she had a tale to tell and told it quite often over the years. For the most part, Mrs. Shuman lived a fairly ordinary life in the Chicago suburbs. A native of St. Charles, Ill., where her father, Oscar Johnson, was a newspaper editor, she moved to nearby Elgin, working for a while at the Elgin Watch Co. before becoming a telephone operator. She retired in 1962.
Her husband, Delbert Shuman, an International Harvester engineer, died in 1981, they had been married for 47 years.
Mrs. Shuman kept her memories of the Titanic alive. The living room of her tidy house in Elgin had what she called her Titanic corner, including books, a painting of the massive liner and a photograph showing her and her brother Harold at the New York premiere of the Titanic movie "A Night to Remember"in 1958. More recently, Mrs. Shuman had acquired photographs showing her and James Cameron, director of the current hit movie, Titanic, at its Chicago premiere in December. As the only Titanic survivor Cameron met, Mrs. Shuman got royal treatment.
She saw the movie three times, first at a screening with critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, then at the premiere and later at a theatre in Elgin. She said she cried each time.
The movie and the attendant publicity made Mrs. Shuman such a sought after celebrity that she changed her telephone number to an unlisted one after getting as many as 10 calls a day from peolpe wanting to her her recollections about the Titanic or simply to speak with someone who had survived the disaster.
But she recalled very little about the fateful night.
Most of the details she related over the years came from her mother, Alice, but Mrs. Shuman insisted she recalled the screams and the sight from a great height of a sea of hands reaching up for her from a lifeboat below.
Mrs. Shuman said her voyage on the Titanic came about by accident. She, her mother and her four year old brother, Harold, had gone to Finland to visit her mother's dying father and other relatives and were on their way back to the United States when they stopped in England and discovered that their passage on another ship had been canceled because of a coal miner's strike.
Learning that the Titanic had room, the family, along with two teen-aged girls they had met in Sweden, hopped a boat and a train to Southampton and bought third-class tickets just hours before Titanic sailed.
Drawing on her mother's account, Mrs. Shuman recalled that at first the disaster had provided a moment of recreation for the third-class passengers. When the Titanic struck an iceberg, she said, tons of ice fell onto the deck outside their cabin door. As her mother, the Swedish girls and others playfully kicked the ice around, an officer shooed them back into their cabins, saying the ship would get under way again shortly.
A little later, she said, the steward who had waited on them in the dining room and apparently taken a liking to the little group knocked on their door and escorted them to the boat deck. Her mother, carrying her daughter in her arms, was helped into a lifeboat, and little Harold, who had been carried to the deck by one of the Swedish girls, was dropped down into the boat after them. The other Swedish girl had gotten into another lifeboat and survived, she said, but the one that had been holding Harold went down with the ship.
Theirs, she said was the last lifeboat to leave the Titanic. Five hours later they were picked up by the ship Carpathia and taken to New York. Until a few years ago when she visited her son, then living in Florida, Mrs. Shuman had not seen the Atlantic since 1912. In 1996 she sailed back to the site of the disaster for a memorial service.
With Mrs. Shuman's death, there are now five known living Titanic survivors. Karen Kamuda of the Titanic Historical Society in Indian Orchard, Massachussetts, said they are: Barbara West and Millzina Dean of England, Michael Navratil of France, and Lillian Asplund and Winnifred Tongerloo of the United States.
Mrs Shuman, whose brother died in 1968, is survived by a son, Earl, of St. Charles, Illinois; two sisters, Irene Van Thournout of St. Charles and Ester Rudder of Connecticut; and two grandchildren.
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