Lillian Asplund
Lillian Gertrud Asplund ( born October 21, 1906 in Worcester, Massachusetts; † 6 May, 2006 Shrewsbury, Massachusetts) was the third last survivor of the sinking of the Titanic and the last person who could remember.
Life
She was the daughter of from Jönköping, Sweden, Carl Oscar Vilhelm Gustafsson derived Asplund (May 7, 1871 to April 15, 1912 ) and his wife Selma Augusta Emilia Asplund, born Johansson (October 10, 1873 to April 15, 1964 ). Lillian had a twin brother, Carl Edgar, two older brothers: Filip Oscar (* 1898), Clarence Gustav Hugo (* 1902) and a younger brother Edvin Rojj Felix (* 1909, † 1983).
Asplund was visiting her grandparents in Sweden and traveled back on the Titanic in the United States. The Asplund family traveled with the ticket No. 347 077 as passengers in the third class. Lillian was at this time five years old. After the Titanic had collided on April 14, 1912 at 23:40 clock with an iceberg, the family was awakened and found himself on the boat deck in a large crowd again. Your way eventually ended up on the starboard side of the ever- steeper sloping boat decks. The deck was brightly lit, the night and the water on the other hand were deep black and cold. At 1:35 clock the lifeboat No. 15 with 67 people was veered, it was already at the height of the top edge, as Mrs. Asplund with the youngest child, Felix on the arm at the last second jumped into it and her husband witted little Lillian grabbed and afterwards threw. It was too late, even safely accommodate the other children in the boat, it was already halfway to the water surface. Selma Asplund could see from the boat, as Carl and the children disappeared in the crowd, and assumed they would come across in another lifeboat. Only No. 15 was taken up by the Cunard Line in the early morning hours of April 15, the British passenger steamship Carpathia as a rescue boat and the rest of the family were not to be found on board, turned out that Carl Asplund and the three other sons in the sinking come at 2:20 clock were killed. The father's body was later found by the rescue ship Mackay - Bennett, the children were gone. For Selma Asplund it was a huge shock and she refused for the rest of their lives, to talk about the disaster - she died on the day exactly 52 years after the sinking of the Titanic.
Lillian Asplund lived after the accident in Massachusetts, remained unmarried and childless. In 2006, she died at the age of 99 years. For a long time it was assumed that she was the last survivor. In fact, however, it was by Barbara Joyce West ( born May 24, 1911 died on 16 October 2007, and later Barbara Dainton ) from Truro and Elizabeth Gladys " Millvina " Dean ( born February 2, 1912 died on 31 May 2009) survived from Southampton. Both women had been at the time of the accident less than a year.