Last US Titanic survivor dies
2006-05-07 22:01
Boston - Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last American survivor of the Titanic disaster, has died at her home in her sleep. She was 99.
Asplund was five-years-old when the ship sank.
She lost her father and three brothers - including her twin - when the "practically unsinkable" White Star Line ship went down in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg on April 15 1912.
She, along with her mother and three-year-old brother Felix, survived.
Ronald Johnson, vice-president of the Nordgren Memorial Chapel in Worcester, Massachusetts, said Asplund "went to sleep peacefully" on Saturday.
The Asplund family were third-class passengers on board the Titanic.
The family boarded the ship in Southampton, England. They were returning to Worcester from their ancestral homeland of Sweden, where they had spent several years.
Shunned publicity
Asplund, who never married, worked at secretarial jobs in the Worcester area most of her life.
She retired early to care for her mother, Selma, who never got over the tragedy.
Selma died on the 52nd anniversary of the sinking in 1964, at age 91.
Felix Asplund died on March 1 1983. He was 73.
Asplund shunned publicity and rarely spoke about her experiences of the disaster.
She was the last Titanic survivor with actual memories of the sinking. The other two survivors were infants at the time.
- AP