Sal "Meets" Frank Goldsmith

Last year was the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.  This was meaningful to me, as I am a huge Titanic nerd -- and, when my sons were young, we were all quite fascinated with it.  We had a membership in the Titanic Historical Society, and visited as many Titanic-related exhibits as we could -- including the THS's Titanic Museum, the Marine Museum at Fall River (which has a super Titanic collection), and Titanic: The Artifact Exhibit at the Great Lakes Science Center.  (We saw it again last year at the Henry Ford Museum and I'm excited to see it's back at the Science Center again.  It's a must for anybody interested in the Titanic!)    Our family read many books about the Titanic, too.  We've made paper models of the ship, had Titanic birthday cakes, and assembled a 1000-piece Titanic jigsaw puzzle.  We even had a dinner party on the 100th anniversary of the sinking, for which I cooked many of the dishes from the April 14th second class dinner menu!  Now that I've established that the Titanic is not just a passing interest of mine, it's time to bring Sal into the picture...

Because of the 100th anniversary, many new books about the Titanic were published in 2012.  As a librarian, I saw some of them come in -- and of course was anxious to check them out and read them.  One particularly interesting volume was Ohio Tales of the Titanic.  When I began to travel with Sal, I remembered this book.  There were quite a few people with Ohio connections on the Titanic, and this book is a goldmine of information about them!  I decided that Sal and I should go to some of their graves.

On Wednesday my sister and I took Sal to Ashland Cemetery to find the stone commemorating Frank Goldsmith  -- who was nine years old when he and his mother survived the sinking.  He is not buried in the cemetery -- his ashes were sprinkled over the wreck site in the Atlantic -- but when I saw the picture in the book, I knew Sal and I had to go to Ashland!

When we arrived at the cemetery, it was lunchtime and nobody was in the office, so we began driving around seeing if we could find Frank Goldsmith's stone without directions.  This was clearly impossible, and we ended up asking a man who tried to help.  He had seen the stone, and pointed us to the two places he thought it might be.  We tried in vain to locate it, however, and returned to the office where we met the gentleman pictured below, who was able to draw us a map that took us right where we needed to go.

We were very grateful to find somebody who could direct us to Frank Goldsmith's stone -- and who was willing to pose with Sal, too!

Here it is!

After we found the stone, the man who had tried to help us came by, and I asked him to pose for a picture with Sal.  He was very happy for us, which we greatly appreciated.

Thanks to this very kind and helpful gentleman -- for trying to remember where Frank Goldsmith's stone was located -- and for agreeing to pose for a Sal photo!  Too bad the very bright sun behind him is causing a big hat shadow over his face.  (Gotta love the moose hat anyway!)

Emily A. Illman was Frank Goldsmith's mother (who remarried after her husband went down with the Titanic).  Her grave is right in front of her son's stone.

 After our cemetery visit, we were quite hungry.  We stopped at a delightful place in downtown Ashland, called Downtown Perk.  The front of the place was a shop with handmade pottery, aprons, jewelry, and more.  In back was the restaurant, where we had a very pleasant meal amid the retro decor and Ashland memorabilia.

Historical postcards of local sites covered our tabletop.

It was a lovely experience!