Isidor and Ida Straus

Wendy Weil Rush, wife of late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush who perished in the recent implosion of the Titan submersible, has been noted for being the great-great-granddaughter of Titanic first-class passengers Isidor and Ida Straus. I can’t help but wonder at the irony of Rush’s fervor for taking people deep into the North Atlantic to see the rusting hulk of a ship, considering his wife’s connection with Titanic.

According to the New York Times wedding announcement, Wendy Hollings Weil of Denver married Californian Richard Stockton Rush in 1986. Stockton, as he was known, had studied aerospace engineering at Princeton and later earned an MBA from UC Berkeley. Two of his ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence, Richard Stockton and Benjamin Rush. The couple have two children.

From an early age Rush had a burning interest in space travel and aquatics and settled on the belief that the universe was below him, not above. It was the unexplored ocean that fascinated him and ultimately became his undoing.

Over a hundred years earlier, the same ocean claimed the lives of Wendy’s great-great-grandparents. Isidor Straus had a distinguished look about him with a neatly trimmed beard, balding pate, and pince nez glasses. Born in Bavaria in 1845 to Jewish parents, he emigrated to the U.S. with his family at age nine and by age fifteen he was working as a clerk in his father’s dry-goods store.

A dedicated merchant, during the Civil War Straus was active in running blockades to keep southern ports open for delivering munitions to the Confederacy and exporting cotton to Britain. When the war was over, he settled in New York and with his brother Nathan set up a glass and china department in the basement of R. H. Macy & Co. By 1896 Nathan and Isidor owned the business and built it into one of the most popular department stores in the country.

Rosalie Ida Blun, born in Germany in 1849, also emigrated to America with her family. When she met Isidor in 1871, she was smitten. Her strong, square jaw and soft, kind eyes captured him, and they married shortly after meeting. Their first of seven children was born the following year.

New York’s 15th congressional district elected Isidor to the U.S. Congress in 1894 as a Democratic, and he served for two years. He also was president of the Educational Alliance, contributed to charitable and educational movements, and was active in civil service reform.

In spite of their prosperity, the Straus couple never forgot their roots. In late 1911 they returned to Germany with their daughter Beatrice, a maid, and a gentleman’s man to visit relatives and places from their youth. When they were ready to return to the U.S. in April 1912, a coal strike docked all cruise ships except Titanic for her maiden voyage. Isidor was 67 by that time and Ida 63. Beatrice had stayed behind.

As first-class women were being helped into lifeboat number eight, Ida started to board. At the last minute, she turned back to Isidor and uttered the final words we know of her: “I go where you go.”

When they died, the Straus estate was estimated to be $3,500,000 (about $110,000,000 today). His body was retrieved from the water and he was buried in New York’s Woodlawn Cemetery. Ida’s body was never found.

Today, the Isidor and Ida Straus Memorial sits at the intersection of Broadway and West End Avenue at W. 106th Street in Manhattan, New York.

My new novel Sheltering Angel follows the story of another first-class couple and their steward. The novel is available from online booksellers and can be ordered through your local bookstore.