Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 9, 1995 TAG: 9504100063
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANNE GEARAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: FREDRICKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Frank Aks was wrenched from his mother's arms and hurled from the side of the sinking Titanic - one, his grieving mother was certain, of the many hundreds who perished when the great ship went down.
But 10-month-old Frank landed in the arms of a rescuer, not in the freezing seas off Newfoundland where the Titanic ground into an iceberg on its maiden voyage 83 years ago.
A panicked passenger threw the baby overboard, yelling hysterically, ``I'll save your baby,'' Leah Aks would tell her son years later. Mother and baby were reunited aboard a rescue ship after the Titanic made its final, groaning lurch under the waves. The orchestra played ``Nearer My God to Thee'' on the flooded deck until musicians and instruments were washed under.
His rescue from the doomed ship was always Frank Aks' favorite story, although he remembered none of the action, said his widow, Marie.
Marie Aks of Norfolk and several experts on the famed ship came to Fredericksburg on Friday for a special exhibition of artifacts pulled from the wreck of the Titanic.
``He really did feel he was a lucky person - special,'' Marie Aks said. ``Sometimes I asked him why he thought he was saved from the Titanic. And he said, `I know: It was because my children had to have a father.'''
Until his death in 1991, Frank Aks lectured about the Titanic and collected souvenirs of the voyage, many of them bequeathed to him by some of the other 704 survivors. Eight survivors are still living, said Titanic historian John P. Eaton.
The Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912, as the jewel of its age. The passenger list included many of society's leading names. There were members of English nobility with titles and castles, and the American variety with industrial and department-store fortunes.
It took 300 master woodcarvers five years to create all the heavy oak woodwork. Two enormous first-class staterooms with working fireplaces and such unheard-of luxuries as double-bowl sinks in the bathrooms cost more than $5,000 to rent for the trans-Atlantic passage.
And for 2,228 passengers, there were but 16 lifeboats. The Titanic took 1,523 souls with it 2 1/2 miles to the bottom of the Atlantic. Leah Aks was one of the few passengers in third class, many of them immigrants like herself, who found a spot in the lifeboats.
The wreck was discovered a decade ago, the mighty hull split between the third and fourth of its towering smoke stacks.
The sinking of the Titanic captivated the world at the time, in part because of the enormous press attention it received, historian Eaton said.
``With the Titanic, you had a great cross-section of 1912 society. You had the very rich, the businessman, the jaded traveler and the immigrants looking for a new home in the new world,'' Eaton said. ``There was someone for everyone to identify with.''
The exhibit at Fredericksburg Historical Prints includes a crystal wine decanter from the opulent first-class section of the ocean liner, a glass serving dish and an American $10 bill discovered by divers.
Behind the artifacts hangs a 10-foot red and white flag - the pennant of the White Star Line that proudly heralded the Titanic as ``unsinkable.''
An identical pennant was to be a gift for Capt. Edward Smith when the Titanic reached New York City.
``He never picked it up, needless to say,'' said Kenneth Haack, a military art dealer who organized the exhibit.
Old photographs of the ship's interior and portraits of some of the famous passengers are included in the exhibit. There also is a 14-foot scale model of the Titanic and several paintings of the ship.
by CNB