I just found my copy of "The Night Lives On" by Walter Lord. On the jacket notes it says he crossed the Atlantic in the summer of 1926 on the Olympic. No wonder the man has such a fascination for this subject! Just a comment..

Regards, Peter

-- Peter Nivling (pcnivling@capecod.net), February 07, 1998

Answers

Walter Lord and his family always made it a point to cross with Capitan Smith also.

-- zackery nightfeatrher (nightfeather21@hotmail.com), February 20, 1998.

Not to be picky, as Kip says, but Walter Lord never crossed with Captain Smith. He's not that old.

-- Thomas Shoebotham (cathytom@ix.netcom.com), February 20, 1998.

True, he was 9 years old in 1926 so he would have missed that by a few years. Possibly his parents had crossed with Capt. Smith before 1912 but I don't know that for sure.

Regards, Peter

-- Peter Nivling (pcnivling@capecod.net), February 20, 1998.

As a matter of fact, Peter, his mother and her father **both** made crossings with EJ. In "The Night Lives On," he relates the story of how his mother was pondering whether to marry a suitor. Her father advised her to take a cruise to England to sort things out. The only stipulation he made was that she had to sail with Capt. Smith. Her father had sailed with Smith several times and swore by him. She made the trip over and back, both times with Smith, then married the suitor (who became Walter's father).

Cheers!

-- Kip Henry (kip-henry@ouhsc.edu), February 21, 1998.

Mr. Henry is correct. Walter Lord never met Captain Smith, but he DID travel on the Titanic's sister ship, and I know for sure that his mother knew Captain Smith. The story about his mother is true, although Lord never said what the problem was with his mother at the time (unless he said so in a later edition I don't know about, which is very possible). I have never heard that Walter Lord's father knew Captain Smith, but that is possible, since his father did travel a lot, and Captain Smith was very well known and considered very helpful...( by the way, if you can, read "Ghosts of the Titanic" by Lord's friend Charles Pellegrino, in which Mr. Pellegrino destroys the myths about Captain Smith's recklessness, and lack of intelligent thoughts. Myths that I sadly admit I myself believed after 30 years of Titanic research until I read Mr. Pellegrino's arguments that made me realize that I would have come to the same conclusion if I had thought about it for 5 min. Mr. Pellegrino's book is a wonderful book despite two mistakes made by many others: 1) The famous toy pig was NOT played with by the Navatril twins in a lifeboat, but on the Carpathia (without, I might add, the owners permission, as all young boys do) and 2) The same toy pig is not kept in a safe deposit box. Other than that, the book is as well research as one of Lord's, which makes sense since Walter Lord helped him write it..) There are a lot of mis-ideas about Lord and the Olympic, most of which are based on what was written on the back of the first edition of A Night To Remember. Sadly, the outsides of these books were written without anyone bothering to talk to the writer themselves. Such as in the case of the first edition of A Night To Remember. On the back of the book it is written that Walter Lord as a solder during W.W.I was transported on the Olympic to Europe. As far as I know this isn't true, but like a game of "telegraph," the story has grown.. Sorry for the long answer... If you don't mind them, feel free to write me at my E-mail address above with any questions. I love to research! Timothy Lc Thomas TimothyLcThomas@aol.com

-- Timoty Lc Thomas (TimothyLcThomas@aol.com), December 14, 2000.

Walter Lord was born in 1917, in Baltimore Maryland. In 1926, nine- year-old Lord sailed the Olympic searching for answers about the lost sister ship. Driving people crazy asking questions about Titanic, drove him to a world of endless dreams and a great future. Lord went to both Princeton and Yale law schools and graduated from both. During World War Two, Lord joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). After World War Two, he became a business editor and advertising copywriter in New York City. He wrote A Night to Remember in 1955 and The Night Lives On in 1986. All of his books that he wrote have all been very successful except for one that he wrote on the civil right riots. Today Lord suffers from Parkinson’s Disease a debilitating illness. His perseverance is the one key that keeps him striving forward and believing in his work. Lord’s interest led him to the life he always wanted. He was always very curious about the lives that were lost on Titanic. The success of A Night to Remember inspired him to dedicate his research and writing to the ‘Lost Souls’ of Titanic.

-- Janna Privett (jprivett@harbornet.com), January 01, 2001.

Walter Lord made a number of translantic trips with his mother after his father's death in 1920. Walter's older sister died in 1929; his mother (who indexed "Night to Remember" for him), in 1959. When his ashes are laid to rest in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, it'll be the first times his entire family's been together in 82 years. I recommend a tour of that cemetery to anyone who visits Baltimore and his interested in history -- it's a wonderfully beautiful 19th century cemetery and full of Baltimore notables such as Johns Hopkins, Junius Brutus Booth and family, Edwin, and in an unmarked grave somewhere in the Booth plot, John Wilkes.

-- H B Turner (rouxbottom@yahoo.com), June 09, 2002.