In the shadow of the Titanic

THE YOUNG man from the Philadelphia area was preparing for bed when he felt a slight swaying of the great liner.

Seventeen-year-old Jack Thayer then noticed that the engines had stopped, and he could hear the sound of running feet and frantic voices just outside his cabin. Jack and his father went up on deck to find out what the commotion was about, and they ran into one of the ship's designers, Thomas Andrews.

The ship had struck an iceberg, and Andrews told them that he did not give the ship much over an hour to live. The unthinkable was happening: The RMS Titanic was sinking.

The stewards passed the word that women and children were to proceed to B deck and board lifeboats on the port side. In the commotion, Jack and his new friend Milton Long were separated from Jack's parents as the surging crowd pushed between them. "I never saw my father again," Thayer would later write.

Jack and Milton desperately clung to the rails of the ship as it began to sink into the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. Long turned to Jack and said goodbye, then slid down the side of the ship, never to be seen again.

Jack jumped in soon after, and was pulled down by the suction of the sinking ship. Just when he thought he could hold his breath no longer, he suddenly surfaced near an overturned lifeboat and was pulled aboard.

Five hours later, he was rescued by the Carpathia, where he was reunited with his mother and 703 other survivors. Lost at sea were 1,503 people, including his father. Although it had been a moonless night, the Titanic had cast a long shadow, and it fell across the life of Jack Thayer.

April 14 marks the 95th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. In the years following the tragedy, Thayer served as an artillery captain in World War I, and eventually became financial vice president of the University of Pennsylvania.

He married and had five children, but his memory of that night never faded. In 1932, Thayer wrote a riveting account of the sinking for the Philadelphia Bulletin, and a 30-page booklet that was published in 1940. He dedicated it to the memory of his father.

Unfortunately, during the latter years of World War II, Thayer's life began to unravel. In October 1943, his son Edward, an army bomber pilot, was reported missing after his plane was shot down. His body was never found.

Thayer was never the same again. His father was lost at sea, and now his son was lost at war. Six months later, in an eerie coincidence, his mother died on the 32nd anniversary of the Titanic sinking. Friends said he seemed forgetful and despondent in the waning summer days of 1945.

On Tuesday morning, Sept. 19, 1945, Jack Thayer left his office at Penn, and drove his wife's car to a destination known only to him. His family reported him missing on Wednesday. A few days later, the car was found parked near the south-side trolley loop on Parkside Avenue.

Although it was there for a while, neither trolley passengers nor a group of neighborhood boys who played football nearby took any particular notice of it.

But two curious Philadelphia Transportation Co. employees decided to check out the apparently abandoned vehicle. Inside, they found the body of Jack Thayer slumped down in the front seat. He had slit his wrists and neck with a razor and bled to death. "He just couldn't deal with my uncle's death," his grandson Edward told me.

Did the relentless shadow of the Titanic contribute to a gradual dimming of the life of Jack Thayer? Did his suppressed emotions and horrific memories of that night, his final glimpse of his father, Milton Long's last goodbye and the agonized cries of the dying as he sat helpless on the overturned boat, come back to haunt Thayer? Was it also the realization that his lost son would never be coming home again that slowly chipped away at his anguished, fragile psyche?

The coroner listed the cause of death as a self-inflicted knife wound, but he shouldn't be faulted for doing do. Professional protocol would never have allowed him to list it as a broken heart, even though that's what really killed Jack Thayer.

"I still have fond memories of sitting on his lap as he cut the roast before Sunday dinners. He was a very loving person, and I still miss him," his daughter Lois told me. As we spoke, I sensed a certain nostalgic longing and sadness in a bitter-sweet voice tinged with regret and sorrow.

The ominous shadow of the Titanic still has the power to dim the light even to this day. *

Christopher Gibbons is a local writer. E-mail gibbonscg@aol.com.