Miss Laina Heikkinen

Miss Laina Heikkinen, 26, was born in Jyväskylä, Finland, in 1886. She had one brother (Toivo, who died on 22.12.1940 of a heart-attack) and three sisters (Ida, Anna, Tyyne, who died all in the late 60's). Lainas father died at an early age, her mother lived longer.

Before coming to America (c. 1910), she worked in a laundry in Helsinki. In New York, she was a maid for two years. Lonely, she returned to Finland, to persuade her sister Tyyne to come with her to America but her mother would not allow it.

In April 1912 she left her home to board the steamer Polaris at Hangö (Hanko), Finland. She travelled to Hull via Copenhagen, before arriving at Southampton. Laina missed her intended ship due to the coal strike, she sailed on the Titanic. Her third class ticket was number 3101282, price: £7 18s 6d.

On the night of the sinking, she was awakened by some commotion in the passageway. Someone shouted "an iceberg". She dressed carefully, she put on three dresses in the hopes of keeping warm, went on deck and entered a lifeboat, probably #14. She stayed for 6 hours in that boat, before she was rescued by the Carpathia.

Laina was taken to St. Vincent Hospital together with the other Finns, after arriving in New York.

Her original destination was New York. Some weeks later she travelled to Boston, Mass. On 10 May 1912 she left for Astoria, Oregon and finally reached Portland to be with Finnish friends. Here she met Jacob Pentilla. They were married in Vancouver, Washington in 1914. The couple bought a farm near Rose Lodge, Oregon, where their daughter Inez Pentilla was born on 8 June 1917.

Later they used some of Laina's Titanic settlement money to buy property near the town of Clatskanie, Oregon and there lived the rest of their lives. Laina never learned to speak English and rarely spoke of her Titanic experience. Her daughter remembers that Laina would sometimes cry in her sleep and always suspicioned that her mother was dreaming of the Titanic disaster--and like all of the other survivors, Laina was haunted by the memory of the screams of the drowning.

Jacob (Jack) Pentilla died in November of 1939 and Laina died in Salem, Oregon on September 9, 1943. Both are buried in the Stewart Creek Cemetery near Quincy, Oregon. Their daughter, Inez, married Gerald Perry in 1938. They have been married for 60 years and now reside in Salem, Oregon.

Documents
Oregon Health Division Certificate Of Death
Clatskanie Chief, 17 September 1943, Obituary

References
Claes-Göran Wetterholm (1988, 1996) Titanic. Rabén, Stockholm
Gerald E. Nummi and Janet A. White (1996) I'm Going To See What Has Happened.

Acknowledgements
Phillip Gowan, USA
Leif Snellman, Finland
Hermann Söldner, Germany