Boston – Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last American survivor of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, has died, a funeral home said Sunday. She was 99.
Asplund, who was 5 years old, lost her father and three brothers – including a fraternal twin – when the “practically unsinkable” ship went down in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg.
She died Saturday at her home in Shrewsbury, said Ronald E. Johnson, vice president of the Nordgren Memorial Chapel in Worcester, Mass.
Asplund’s mother, Selma, and another brother, Felix, who was 3, also survived the Titanic’s sinking in the early morning of April 15, 1912.
Asplund was the last Titanic survivor with actual memories of the sinking, but she shunned publicity and rarely spoke about the event.
At least two other survivors are living, but they were too young to have memories of the disaster. Barbara Joyce West Dainton of Truro, England, was 10 months old, and Elizabeth Gladys “Millvina” Dean of Southampton, England, was 2 months old.
The Asplund family had boarded the ship in Southampton as third-class passengers on their way back to Worcester from their ancestral homeland, Sweden, where they had spent several years.
Selma Asplund died on the 52nd anniversary of the sinking in 1964 at age 91. Felix Asplund died March 1, 1983, at age 73.
