Editor’s note: Shaanineh Abi-Saab George is Lebanese and had traveled back to Lebanon.
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) – This weekend marks 111 years since the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the ocean, Taking with it the lives of more than 1,500 passengers and crew.
Like many historical moments, there’s a Youngstown connection to this tragedy.
On April 10, 1912, the Titanic set sail on its maiden voyage. It was just five days later on April 15 when that voyage came to an end. Traci Manning, curator of education with the Mahoning Valley Historical Society, said passengers from around the world were aboard, with some from Youngstown.
“It’s the family of George Dennick Wick. Very wealthy local businessman here, so many ties to the community with the Wick Family. He traveled to Europe hoping to revive his health,” Manning said.
Wick, one of the founders of Youngstown Sheet and Tube, traveled on the big ship with his wife Mollie and daughter Mary Nathalie, as well as two other family friends.
“Also aboard was a woman named Shaanineh Abi-Saab George. She was a local Syrian immigrant, and she had traveled back to Syria to be with a dying son,” Manning said.
Just like Wick, George wasn’t traveling alone.
“She was traveling with three of her male cousins, all coming here to Youngstown to get jobs in the steel mills. And then one of the cousins’ nieces Banoura. So, they were two parties of five. One in first class. One in third class. Could not have been more different,” Manning said.
Unfortunately, when the ship hit the iceberg, the men did not make it, and the women and children did, Manning explained.
On the very same day of the horrible incident, the Youngstown Vindicator’s headline read “Titanic, Largest Ship Afloat, Meets with Accident”. Days later on April 17, 1912, the headline read “Col. George Wick among the missing”
“He is memorialized here in Youngstown on the covers of newspapers. There were memorial services for him. So much attention,” Manning said.
On the other hand, the other local deaths did not garner the same attention.
“The George family, the two girls survive — Shaanineh and the niece Banoura, but there is no attention (to the others). They were third-class immigrants. People really didn’t seem to care as much,” Manning said.
Manning said what is truly remarkable is the legacies both families left behind. Especially with the George family.
“She gets back here. She works as a laundress for a while. Her sons open up a small grocery store and then around 1948, she purchases this new-fangled technology of an ice cream cone mold,” Manning said.
And that right there was the start of the famous Joy Cone company.
As for the Wick Family, that name lives on in the city of Youngstown.
