When there was trouble on the ship late that night, Louis Garrett didn't want to leave the room. He told his sister Amelia, who was only 12 but two years older than he, that if the ship was in trouble, someone would come after them.

Louis Garrett's sister persisted, and they went up to the main deck of the Titanic on that night of April 15, 1912. About 1,500 people died after the "unsinkable" Titanic, its starboard side ripped by an iceberg, went to the bottom.

The two children were among the 711 people who survived.

Mr. Garrett, a longtime resident of Jacksonville, died Saturday at age 79 in Atlanta after a brief illness.

"He never wanted to go on a ship again," Mr. Garrett's niece, Suzanne Kozak, said yesterday.

The odds against the brother and sister surviving the chaos and panic on board the luxury liner were high.

They had boarded the Titanic in Cherbourg, France, to come to live with relatives in the United States and Canada, she said. Amelia was to become Mrs. Kozak's mother.

"My mother wanted Louis Garrett on a lifeboat first, and that was done." Mrs. Kozak said. "They ended up on separate lifeboats and didn't see each other for three days, when they met in the same hospital in New York City."

A memorial service for Mr. Garrett will be at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at Kingdom Hall on Oak Street.