Learning from the Titanic by N. Barry Carver (feel good fiction books .TXT) 📕

again she didn’t really have a clue what they were talking about, but the words came out naturally enough, “you’ve come to... a good conclusion?”

“I’m sorry, Ruth,” he said quietly, as if he really meant it, “If I’ve misled you. The action on my report will occur no matter what my findings.”

“I don’t understand,” the young lady finally had to admit.

“My report is a formality. When I return, no matter what I report, the result will be the same.”

Then rough hands grabbed at the girl, finally gaining purchase on her arms and dragging her away from the railing. She struggled against the surprise of it but had no chance to overcome the strength of the steward and the Titanic’s Sixth Officer J.P. Moody. Nevertheless, she yelled something to end their conversation at the strange man she was leaving on the deck.

“You’ve learned nothing then!”

Moody tossed young Becker into lifeboat thirteen, which had already been made ready and was now being eased to the railing from a deck now slick, slanted and groaning under stress.

Impossibly, Mr. John Smith again caught the eye of the young lady and answered her allegation.

“But I have! Look at these men! They are saving you - when hundreds of the bigger and stronger will die!” This loud observation earned him a clout from one of the deckhands working the ropes, but he shrugged it off and stayed next to young Ruth as the boat slid over the rail, “Humans do this! This is of value!”

Ruth, through all the bluster and noise, zeroed in on the strange man one last time, “Like my family for my brother!”

“Right.”

“But your report won’t change things,” the reality of what she was saying seemed so much more than a simple on-board chat between random passengers. It seemed very, very important but she could not say why.

She lost sight of Mr. Smith for a moment as the boat began its short winching down to the black-faced brine. Then the rail, deck and “man” all came into view again, slowly rising above her head.

“But I won’t make it,” Smith called, he almost seemed to be smiling, “Without a report, they’ll start again. And they won’t take action if they think I’m still here.” Now nearly out of earshot and sight, Mr. Smith lifted his hat to nod his bald, gray head in a sort of salute. “You’re a wonderful teacher Ruth...” and the rest of what he said could not be made out among the noises, shouts and cries in the panic of the last throes of the ship. Did he yell to her that she had saved the world? No, that couldn’t possibly be.

After terrifying hours, freezing temperatures and unbearable screams falling to an even worse silence, the RMS Carpathia slowly inched toward her lifeboat and Ruth was saved. Another unbearable hour passed as she was hauled on board and searched frantically for her siblings and mother. Finally reunited, they arrived in New York four days after her strange meeting with the unexplainable man and the terrible accident that would change so many lives. By the time they boarded the train for Michigan, and her brother’s cure that been the sole reason for the trip, she’d seemingly forgotten all of it. Just another strange dream in a night filled with too many nightmares to even think about.

Somewhere in the mingled sparks and chemistry of the young girl’s brain a few words of the encounter must have lodged. She held a lifelong conviction that learning was the key to everything important in this life and spent her adult life in the career of teaching, first to high schoolers and later on to those in grade school... especially those at about the age she was when she accidentally became part of history and, just perhaps, saved the entire world in the process.

And while she only spoke of the tragedy in later life, all reports have it that she was, indeed, a wonderful teacher.



From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Becker:

Miss Ruth Becker, 12, boarded the Titanic at Southampton travelling with her mother, brother Richard and sister Marion from India to Benton Harbor, Michigan for medical treatment. Becker became a high school teacher in Kansas, later returning to Benton Harbor to teach grade school.

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Text: © 2012 Barry Carver
Publication Date: 04-24-2012

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