Everyone in life has a passion. They are passionate about something or someone, even if no one else knows what that passion is. It’s one of God’s more interesting gifts to us. I have a few things I could consider passions – my DH and my two darlings I am very passionate about, I’m passionate about helping others. I’m also passionate about writing. But one of the other things that I am truly passionate about is a story that started 99 years ago. As the anniversary draws near each year, I always find myself reading, contemplating and wondering about a cold, moonless night on calm seas where 1,517 people perished because of a set of circumstances that spiraled out of control.

I segue here because I will write more on the tragedy in April. I wanted to actually tell you about something I own – a piece of the Titanic.

When I was in New York City a couple of years ago, the TITANIC exhibition was there and my brother-in-law, my sister, my DH and I went to it. I can’t really describe it to you, it HAS to be experienced and if you EVER have the chance… GO!!!

You will find at the end of the exhibition, you have the opportunity to buy books and tapes and all sorts of things that are pretty cool. Of COURSE I was going to buy something, but the question was what. I looked around high and low and dodged people right and left. I fell in love with a few of the books and some replicas of some of the instruments used on board and that type of thing. Then I found the one thing that WAS Titanic.

Before Titanic left port, there were 5,892 tons of coal loaded for the journey and much of that came from other ships who had to relinquish their loads because of a coal miner’s strike that was going on at the time. Titanic burned almost 700 tons of coal a day and as she was just a couple of days into the trip when she sank, thousands of tons were scattered across the debris field.

The exhibition had custom made necklaces with some of the coal recovered from the sea floor inside. My daughters have matching glass hearts filled with coal and I have a cross filled with the same. I wear it proudly, though for a very long time I was afraid to. I was afraid of it breaking or me losing it or something like that. However, I realized if we all live our lives in fear, we wouldn’t have a life worth living. That necklace is a pretty good reminder to me to live fearlessly. And that’s what I try to do.

If you want to see a permanent exhibition, Branson,MO has one and here’s the link for you. http://www.titanicbranson.com/

Like I said… I will write more in April on Titanic… but in case you are wondering how this “lady” became a passion of mine. It all started in 6th grade at St. Joseph’s Elementary School and a dreaded report. I don’t remember exactly what the assignment was, but I do remember I couldn’t think of a darned thing to write. I looked all over the house for some inspiration – everything from my father’s Yankees baseball contract to flipping through pages in the encyclopedia (A big set of expensive books that quickly became outdated.) I remember sitting in the living room going through a book of old newspaper articles and found this…..

My heart was touched and I sat in the living room crying as I read and reread the article many times over. Yes, I did make an A on the paper, but I learned more than Mrs. Akeroyd anticipated.