Two Titanic Passengers Meet Thirty-Nine Years Later

Charlotte Zureick
Oct 6, 2024
7 min read

Leah Aks and Selini Yazbeck of Norfolk, Virginia

Picture of Mrs. Anthony Yesbak from The Evening World, April 25, 1912

“Two Titanic Survivors Meet 39 Years Later”

The Virginia-Pilot, Norfolk, Virginia

April 15, 1951

Note: Article abridged to include information focused on the women's account.

“The stage had not been set for disaster but there was an evil foreboding in the subconscious of Mrs. Sam Aks as she paced restlessly on the third-level open deck of the great passenger vessel Titanic 39 years ago last night.

“She was 18 years old and her mind was crowded with many things–this new land of promise two scant days away and this new life she would lead.

“Her 10-month-old son was asleep in the cabin she shared with another immigrant woman. She tried to sleep herself but for some reason could not.

“It was a beautiful night, clear and starry and cold. It was a night that challenged a glimpse into the future.

“As Mrs. Aks walked along the deck at 10:30 p.m. she knew that most of the passengers and crew had retired for the night, with the exception of the watch and late hangers-on in the lounges.

“There was a distant sound of music from the main ballroom, the steady vibration of the great propellers and the comfortable slap of water as the bow sliced and swept aside the seas of the North Atlantic.

“After some minutes the lonesomeness of the empty deck and the oppressive cold drove the young woman back to her cabin. She was undressed and in bed by 11:30, but still could not sleep.

“On the same deck and in a nearby cabin, Mrs. Anthony Yesbak, a 15-year old bride of two months, was traveling with her husband. They had started their journey to the new land with some 18 other friends and relatives from Lebanon. The husband had been in the United States before and owned part of a business in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

“He had returned to Lebanon to marry this girl and take her back to America.

Finally Meet in Norfolk

“Mrs. Yesbak, now Mrs. Celiney A. Decker, of 1058 West 42nd Street, and Mrs. Aks, who today lives at 1025 Redgate Avenue, were to share hours of almost unbelievable horror and personal tragedy that night. And although they were to survive and then to live within a few blocks of each other here for 36 years, they were not to meet until last week.

“Mrs. Aks had the blessings of her parents for the trip only because the ship was rated ‘unsinkable.’ Her husband was already in Norfolk, working as a tailor. Weeks before he had sent money for passage on another liner, but her parents refused to let the only daughter and grandchild in her family leave, begging her to wait for the sailing of the ship that could not go down.

Ice Sighted Ahead

“‘I was just beginning to sleep when I heard it,’ Mrs. Aks recalled last week. ‘It wasn’t a crash–it was a crushing sound. The ship didn’t lurch. It only seemed to pause briefly. That was all. I thought nothing of it and had started to try and sleep again when someone knocked at the door. Quick,' a man’s voice said, ‘the ship is in danger.’

“Still she was not alarmed. She thought someone was trying to get into the cabin; but she did get up and start to dress.

“‘I couldn’t realize what was going on, but I grabbed my baby and rushed out to the stairway.’ said Mrs. Aks. ‘Already there was water on the floor. The passageway was dark but at the stairway we could see lights up ahead. I knew it was bitter cold and both my baby and I were dressed only in nightgowns. But I grabbed a shawl and later was surprised to see that in the excitement I had only wrapped it around the baby’s head.

“‘While I was being helped up the stairs to the boat deck someone grabbed my little son and he was gone. Everywhere were people but I could not find the baby. One of the officers told me he might have already been put on one of the boats that had gone away. I prayed to God that he had been…’

“The same story about lack of immediate excitement was told by Mrs. Yesbak (Decker). She had been asleep when the ship struck the ice, but the moment was not dramatic enough to arouse excitement. She and her husband went up on the boat deck out of curiosity, more than anything else.

Shouts and Music

“Of the intense drama that was beginning to unfold there she understood little. The spoken lines were all in English and she had not mastered the language well enough to understand.

“‘Everyone seemed to shout and dance and the band played music. People seemed to sing and laugh at first.

“‘My husband had left some money in the cabin and there were all our clothes and many other things we were taking to America. We started down for them, but the water on our deck was waist-deep. We never got there.’

"The girl-wife and her husband returned to the boat deck to watch and become a part of the stirring pageant. The first lifeboats were being lowered. The band played lively tunes.

"Mrs. Yesbak (Decker) got into one of the boats with another woman from her voyage party. The last she saw of her husband, he was standing at the deck watching sadly as her boat was being lowered away.

“‘He wanted to come, but they wouldn’t let him. Officers were there with guns to see that no men got on the boats. One did get in my boat. He was dressed like a woman. He was saved with the women.’

“Mrs. Aks, during the excitement of the boat deck drama, continued her frantic search for her child but to no avail. She was saved by a turn of events which, during the next four days, swept her through the strangest series of circumstances in anyone’s history of the sinking.

“‘My mind became paralyzed and I began to be glad that the baby was not there. If he had to die, I didn’t want to see it. I remember thinking only of my mother and how she had not wanted me to come. I do not remember thinking of dying.

“‘The last boat was about to be lowered and a woman got out of it to kiss her husband one last time. Someone picked me up and shoved me in the space she left vacant and the boat was lowered. The woman never got back in.

Rescue Ships Arrives

“‘I don’t remember anything of the lifeboat except that I was very wet and cold. I remember when the rescue ship came, the Carpathia.’

“Mrs. Yasbak’s lifeboat was only a short distance away from the Titanic when the end came to the great ship.

“‘I saw it against the sky. Top lights were still on. People who were on deck were screaming and singing. I could see some of them as they jumped into the water. The ship stood almost on its nose and there was a crashing sound like something had broken loose inside it before it went under. Then there was nothing but moaning and crying and people calling for help.’

“Mrs. Aks remembers too. ‘It was like a great music, the screaming and shouting.’ It was all over at 2:30 a.m.

“‘We saw the lights of the rescue ship as it came toward us, but we thought they were stars. We had learned not to hope,’ Miss Aks said.

“Out of the party of 20 people who were bound from Lebanon with Mrs. Yesbak (Decker), 15 were lost, including her four-year-old nephew and her husband.

“Although the younger woman remembers little of the Carpathia except consoling and being consoled, Mrs. Aks had reason for vivid reminiscences of that ship.

“‘It was almost four days since the sinking and we were about to come into New York. My mind was still a blank. I was sitting on the deck when I heard a baby cry. I did not even remember that I had a baby, but there was something in that cry that made me look.

“‘I saw this child sitting on the lap of an Italian woman and he was trying to come to me.

“Slowly I recognized him as my child. I tried to get him away from the woman, but she wouldn’t let me have him. She said he was her own. Even the child knew better and soon some of the passengers called the captain of the ship.’

Thought It Was Miracle

“Mrs. Aks had three ways to prove that the baby was hers. First, since the family was Jewish, she was able to show the circumcision. Second, she was able to identify the child by a birthmark that the Italian woman did not know about. Third, she was able to feed the infant, and the Italian woman was not.

“Later the Italian woman told her as her lifeboat was being lowered someone threw the baby from the deck. It fell, unhurt, in her lap, and she believed it had been given to her as a miracle.

“This child was Frank Phillip Aks. Now 40, he lives here at 925 Brandon Avenue.

“For years, Mrs. Aks had tried to find the woman who saved her boy, but with no success. She ran advertisements in many newspapers.

“‘I would like to be able to do something for that kind person,’ she said.

“When the Carpathia put the survivors ashore, they were cared for by a shocked American public. Mrs. Aks’ husband brought her to Norfolk two weeks afterward. Mrs. Yesbak and some of her relatives stayed in New York, made hopeful by a rumor of another shipload of survivors being on its way, then left for Wilkes-Barre when it proved false. Several years later she married Mr. Decker, and they moved to Norfolk. Her second husband died two years ago.

“Here Aks and Decker both went into the salvage business, but the two women did not meet until last week. As they talked of their rescue, it became apparent that they may have left the Titanic in the same lifeboat.

“And Mrs. Decker remembered well the girl on the Carpathia who said someone had her child.

“Mrs. Decker had reared seven children now, and Mrs. Aks has reared three, including Frank Phillip. Mrs. Aks named her only daughter Carpathia.”

Two Titanic Passengers Meet Thirty-Nine Years Later

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