Hi, Colleen:
Yes, I'm very glad to report that "baby" Audrey is still with us and going strong at the tender age of 87. Unless like Millvina Dean and the other three remaining
Titanic survivors, she has passed on without knowing it....
I received a letter from Audrey a few weeks ago, and she says she and her husband are doing well. Audrey is active in charitable fund raising and just recently completed a project with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. It was Audrey’s desire to have a Lifeboat named in honor of her mother, who also survived the sinking. After much hard work, she was able to present the Institution with a sizeable check, and I’m happy to say that the new boat was launched recently and is named for her mother, the “Amy Lea.”
The first time I met Audrey (and Alice Lines, the nurse who saved her) was on the 75th anniversary of the sinking. In a strange turn of events, we were in Alice’s garden at about 2:10 in the afternoon, the exact time the torpedo struck. Without prompting from me (yes, I swear it’s true!), Alice looked up at the sky and commented, “You know, it was a lovely day just like today….” She then proceeded to tell us her experiences during the sinking exactly 75 years later to the moment. I still get goose bumps thinking about it.
The second visit was right after the Ballard
Lusitania expedition. National Geographic wanted a survivor to look at footage of the wreck while they filmed the reaction to seeing the ship again. I naturally suggested Alice Lines because she was 18 years old at the time of the sinking and had very good recall of what happened that day. (I was also hoping that seeing the wreck would jog some memories I hadn’t heard before.) Of course, if Alice was there, I told them, they really needed Audrey as well. I’m sorry the footage of them looking at the wreck never made it into the documentary because it was fascinating watching their reactions to seeing the ship again. In a word, they were “spellbound.”
My apologies for going on, but Audrey’s a very special lady and deserves a bit of recognition.
Eric Sauder
