This morning at the breakfast table, during a conversation Charlotte initiated about the Titanic: Me: Do you want to hear a beautiful story of something that happened on the Titanic? Its about an older Jewish couple, the Strauses. They were wealthy and high-society; I think the husband owned a department store chain. Anyway, they were filling rescue boats with women and children first, but Mrs. Straus refused to go. She said, I will not go without my husband. So the people in charge said, Well, these are the venerable Strauses, so okay, he can go with her. But Mr. Straus said: I will not go before other men. Then they said: We will die as we have lived: together. And Mrs. Straus took off her fur coat and put it around the shoulders of her maid, and she insisted her maid take her place on the lifeboat. And then she and her husband stood arm in arm on the deck as the ship went down. A pause. Then: Me (misty-eyed): Niko, dont you hope that if we were somehow ever in a similar situation, we would do the same? Nik: Oh my GOD, you would jump into that lifeboat so fast. Youd be waving good-bye to me with one hand and calling our life insurance agent with the other.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 23:39:20 +0000
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