On April 14, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg and then sank. Dean, his mother and his 2-year-old brother survived, but his father died along with the many other third-class men who were not allowed on the lifeboats.
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According to Dean, his father felt the ship collide with the iceberg, which could have saved his family’s lives.
“I think it was my father who saved us,” Dean said in 2002, according to the Los Angeles Times. “So many other people thought the Titanic would never sink, and they didn’t care. My father didn’t take any chances.”
Dean, his mother and brother were placed on lifeboat 13, as reported by BBC News.
The survivors on the lifeboats were then picked up by the RMS Carpathia and taken to New York. But Dean’s father was among more than 1,500 people who died in the tragedy.
Dean said she believed it was true that White Star Lines employees blocked third-class passengers from going on deck and potentially escaping the sinking ship, the New York Times reported.
“It couldn’t happen in this day and age, and it’s so wrong, so unfair. What do they say? ‘Judy O’Grady and the Colonel’s Lady are sisters under the skin.’ “That’s how it should have happened that night, but it didn’t,” she said.
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