Grandma Gramlow took the grand kids on their Memorial Day Cemetery tour. Schedule included Union / Orchard Prairie Cemetery, Fairmount Cemetery, Elk Cemetery and a visit to Great Aunt Carol. On the way home they went to The Ram for lunch. Audrey described her Ram Burger as a Papa Joe on steroids (for those of you familiar with Zip's). Had 2 patties, 2 slices ham plus cheese and all the fixings.
A special item of interest was the Titanic monument at Fairmount Cemetery, highlighting residents of Spokane who were on the Titanic sailing. Found the article describing the history in the Spokesman Review:
William Rice emigrated with his wife, Margaret, from Ireland. In 1902 he found work in Montreal as a shipping clerk for the Grand Trunk Railway, which was managed by Charles Melville Hays. The Rice family moved to Spokane in 1909 and Rice went to work as a machinist for Great Northern Railroad. However, in 1910 at age 32, he died of injuries from an accident at the rail yard in Hillyard, leaving behind his widow and five children. Rice was buried at Fairmount. The man who prepared the grave site was Fairmount laborer John Henry Chapman, who had come to Spokane from England. With the settlement she received from the railroad, Margaret Rice purchased some property in Spokane and moved her husband’s remains from the $5 plot where he was first interred to a $50 plot with grand headstone, again with Chapman preparing the site. The second burial took place on April 15, 1910, exactly two years before the Titanic tragedy. She then took her children back to Ireland for a long visit and booked third-class passage on the Titanic for her return trip to America.
Chapman went back to England to marry his childhood sweetheart, Sara Elizabeth “Lizzie” Lawry. They booked second-class passage aboard the Titanic for their honeymoon and return voyage to the United States.
The Grand Trunk Railway’s Charles Hays, who had attended a railway board meeting in England, and his wife, Clara, booked first-class passage aboard the Titanic as guests of White Star Line’s managing director J. Bruce Ismay for their trip home. They were accompanied by their daughter and son-in-law.
The Rice family, the Chapman newlyweds and Charles Hays did not know one another, nor did they know of their connection to Spokane through William Rice, Broyles said. The Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14 about 400 miles off Newfoundland. A few hours later, at 2:20 a.m. April 15, the great ship disappeared beneath the surface of the Atlantic. Among the 1,517 people who died either on board or in the frigid water were Margaret Rice and her children, John and Lizzie Chapman, and Charles Hays.
Records show that Margaret’s body and that of her youngest son, Eugene Francis, 2 1/2, were recovered; the other children’s remains were lost forever. John Chapman’s body was recovered, but Lizzie’s was never found. Margaret Rice, her son and Chapman were buried in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Hays’ body was recovered and returned to Montreal for burial. Hays’ wife, daughter and son-in-law were among the survivors.
But that’s not the end of the story. Broyles said Chapman’s pocket watch was found on his body. Not being waterproof, it stopped when he went into the water at 1:45 a.m. The watch is now on display in the Titanic Honor and Glory Exhibit at Falmouth, County Cornwall, England.
The story of John and Lizzie Chapman was the basis for the newlywed couple portrayed in the 1958 film about the Titanic, “A Night to Remember.”
