In 1967, I was a junior in high school and had decided to pursue a career in radio. You had to be at least 16 years old to get a third class radio operators license, a prerequisite for working in a radio station. There was a test. I studied for it so I could take it soon after my 16th birthday. I passed the exam and received my license, a small but very official-looking piece of paper with my name on it, impressive to my young eyes.

The previous year I had joined Junior Achievement, which was supposed to teach kids about business. Our sponsor was a company that made imitation leather upholstery. Our JA ‘company’ manufactured a footstool covered with this material. I sold many to family members. It was actually a pretty good product. They lasted a long time and people got good use from them.

When I went back to JA in the fall of 1967, I learned that one of the new sponsors was a radio station and the company’s likely ‘product’ would be a radio show, for which we would sell advertising. Since I already had an interest in radio and even had my license, I joined immediately and made no secret of my eagerness to do everything. I became president, announcer on the radio program and the company’s most successful advertising salesperson.

My most loyal advertising customer was Mr. Goldsmith, who ran the camera shop downtown on the square. I knew him through my grandfather, who used to have a home materials store nearby. They were about the same age and both named Frank. Mr. Goldsmith even looked a little like Grandpa; tall, lean, with sharp features and wispy white hair.

His camera shop was pretty typical. Although he did sell cameras, his business was mostly film and other supplies. I don’t recall anyone else working there except Mrs. Goldsmith, whose name I now know was Vickie. In the back, Mr. Goldsmith had a peculiar collection of home movie cameras and projectors, including several that operated on by-then obsolete systems. Several used 16mm film, but exposed only half of each frame on the first pass, the other half on the second pass. The film was then processed, split and spliced together to form a single piece of 8mm film. My grandfather had had a home movie camera for as long as I could remember. He probably got it from Mr. Goldsmith.

Mr. Goldsmith was always nice to me and was my most consistent customer. Buying advertising on a Junior Achievement radio program wasn’t really advertising, more like a charitable contribution. I didn’t understand the distinction then, but I appreciated Mr. Goldsmith’s loyalty. I also appreciated the way he treated me, like an adult, a fellow business person, not like a kid. He did it in a matter-of-fact way that was still unusual to me, at age 16.

I valued my relationship with Mr. Goldsmith for another reason. He was a local celebrity, albeit a low key one, a genuine survivor of the Titanic. My mother told me all about it before I ever met Mr. Goldsmith in person. He was a young boy, eight or nine, migrating from England with his parents. He and his mother survived, his father did not.

I would like to report that Mr. Goldsmith and I developed a close relationship, that we talked for hours as I helped him around the shop, that he shared with me his deepest thoughts and most harrowing memories of that famous event. It wasn’t quite like that, but during the 1967-68 school year I did see him every few weeks and we talked, more about photography than about the Titanic, but we talked about that too. All he ever said was that he was very young and didn’t remember much about it, except that it was dark, he was wet and cold, and he could hear lots of people screaming in the distance, like when he lived near Tiger Stadium in Detroit and someone hit a home run.

I probably saw Mr. Goldsmith for the last time in 1969 or 1970, as I spent less and less time in Mansfield after starting college. I now know that, in his later years (he was about 64 when I knew him), Frank Goldsmith became closely associated with the Titanic Historical Society in Massachusetts. He became a popular after-dinner speaker, regaling audiences with his tale of a little boy from Kent who lost his father and best friend on that cold night in 1912. When he died in 1982, his ashes were sprinkled over the wreck site in the North Atlantic. His widow gave his papers to a family friend, who crafted them into an autobiography called Echoes In The Night, a True Life Adventure, The Autobiography of Frank Goldsmith, a Third Class Titanic Survivor.

When Frank Goldsmith died, his unique story punctuated by the unusual disposition of his remains earned him a major piece in The New York Times. They reported that his mother had covered his eyes that night in the rescue boat, presumably to spare him from the sights we all know from James Cameron’s movie, such as the stern of the great ship rising in the air before sinking into the frigid depths. They also reported that, according to his widow, he found it difficult to talk about the experience when he started to give speeches, around the time I knew him, but it got easier for him as time went on.

Frank Goldsmith’s later life as a professional Titanic survivor raises interesting issues about celebrity and the tendency of public figures to conform to public expectations. He must have developed a taste for it as something to do in his retirement years. He never seemed that interested in it when I knew him. His camera shop, though very personal and idiosyncratic, had no Titanic memorabilia displayed in it that I can recall, and he was always much more interested in talking about photography than about the Titanic. My impression was not that he found it painful, he just didn’t remember much and didn’t find the subject very interesting.

In the first years after the tragedy there had been hundreds of survivors, many who had been adults and had detailed memories of the event. By the 1960s and 70s, there were just a handful left, men and women like Mr. Goldsmith who had been children in 1912. They had to carry the whole weight of the Titanic legacy and some, like Mr. Goldsmith, rose to the task. I hope he had fun with it. I suspect that he did. I wonder what became of his home movie equipment collection?

© 2003, Charles Kendrick Cowdery, All Rights Reserved.