Veteran director recalls interviewing Titanic survivor

The Scotland Road production that recently closed at the Little Theatre of Tuscarawas County generated a great deal of renewed interest in the Titanic. Among those with real stories to tell was Rex Huffman, veteran theater director and former features editor for the Times Reporter, who actually interviewed a survivor of the famed ship.

“If I hadn’t chosen journalism as my life’s work, I never would have had such an opportunity,” Huffman said. “I was a writer for 42 years and an editor for 20 of those, and that was one of my most memorable assignments.”

After graduating from Strasburg High School in 1969, Huffman majored in journalism and minored in political science and history at Kent State University. Just out of college, he applied for a job with the first paper in Tuscarawas County, The Evening Chronicle, based in Uhrichsville.

“I was accepted in that job and moved with the paper wherever it went,” he said. “I never had to interview for another job.”

When the Chronicle was bought by the Times Reporter, Huffman took his job there as assistant to the state editor in charge of 40 correspondents. Until his retirement he served at different times as editor of many of the sections of the paper including Showcase, the Sunday Magazine, Arts and Leisure, Food, Seniors, and then as features editor.

The opportunity to interview someone from the Titanic presented itself unexpectedly in 1998 when a member of the advertising department at the Times Reporter asked Huffman if he would be interested in talking to a survivor. She gave him the phone number.

“Of course I accepted right away,” Huffman said, “but this was such a unique situation that I began to second guess myself and almost turned it down. I wasn’t sure whether I should intrude on this woman’s life. When I realized that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I called her, and we had a wonderful phone interview.”

Huffman said the survivor, Eleanor Johnson, was in her 80s when they talked. She said all her information came from her mother Alina Vilhelmina Johnson because she was only 18 months old at the time of their rescue. Her mother refused to talk about it anywhere but at home because it was too painful for her.

Eleanor Johnson related the following story: She, her mother and 4-year-old brother Harold had traveled from the U.S. to Finland to visit Alina’s dying father. They were scheduled to return to the U.S. on a smaller ship, but there was a coal strike, and all the available coal was given to the newer, larger ships. Thus, on April 14, 1912, the little family was transferred to the Titanic with a space in steerage. She did not remember how they were able to get to the boat deck. but they were among the last of the survivors to be put into a lifeboat.

Shortly after the ship struck the iceberg, Alina and a cabin mate went out on deck and kicked around pieces of ice until an officer told them to get back to their room as the ship would be on its way quickly.

Soon they were taken on deck by a group of Swedes and tossed into the lifeboat. After being rescued by the RMS Carpathia, they arrived in New York City on April 18. Friends they had met on board died on the ship. When Eleanor Johnson’s father in Illinois heard of the tragedy and the rescue, he is said to have fainted. Friends raised $100 to send him to New York to meet his family.

Into her 80s Johnson remained active in Titanic-related activities. Her family members were honored guests at the screening of the 1953 film, “Titanic,” and the 1958 screening of “A Night to Remember.”

She was the only survivor Director James Cameron met with while filming the newer version of “Titanic” in 1997. After the movie’s release, she had to change her phone number to an unlisted one after receiving so many phone calls every day.

In her 80s Johnson visited her son in Florida — the first time she had seen the Atlantic Ocean since 1912. She also joined other survivors on an expedition cruise to the site of the Titanic’s wreck. Johnson died March 7, 1998, a few short months after Huffman’s interview.

There is a strong connection between Huffman’s interest in the Titanic as a child and his second career as a theater actor and director.

“We didn’t live in a neighborhood full of children when I was growing up,” he said, “so my mother encouraged me to watch quality movies on television and often took me to the theaters. I developed a love of story then. One of my best experiences was in fifth grade where my teacher Verna Brown introduced her students to acting. On Columbus Day we presented a radio play over the PA system for the whole school to hear. I played Christopher Columbus’s father. Later, I was assigned the part of Squire Holly in a one-act play. It was my first experience with costumes and memorizing lines. My first audition netted me the part of the coroner in ‘Night of Jan. 16.’

“A cousin told me the movie ‘Titanic’ was going to be on TV. As luck would have it, I was enjoying one of my weekend visits with grandparents and was able to talk them into letting me stay up after 11 o’clock to watch it. I was enthralled and could talk of nothing else the next day. That year was the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the ship, and I read the story in a copy of Weekly Reader at school. Now I couldn’t get enough of the Titanic. After reading ‘A Night to Remember,’ I was completely hooked.”

In 1977 Huffman’s theater and writing interests began to coincide. While performing in “January Thaw” in Strasburg, he had to miss a week of rehearsals to cover the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City.

His first acting experience at Little Theatre was as Sitting Bull in “Annie Get Your Gun.” It was during that show he met his future wife Karen, who shared his interest in the Titanic. Together they attended exhibits and programs around the country including the Broadway musical where they discovered the walls covered with passenger lists from the Titanic and found the names of Johnson and her family. They collected books and mementos. Huffman prizes a small piece of coal taken from the ocean floor near the broken ship. Karen, always his partner in their Titanic adventures, passed away in 2016.

“Probably my favorite show of the many I have directed is the musical, ‘The Unsinkable Molly Brown,’” Huffman said. “It is a fictionalized story of survivor Molly Brown and had been presented by the theater years earlier at Dover High School. It was the very first show I directed at the theater, in the winter of the 1986-87 season, and was attended by more than 2,000 people. I had chosen it because of its connection with the Titanic.”

He has been directing musicals ever since.

Huffman continues his interest in the Titanic and the theater today, though he is not currently writing.

“It’s hard to believe I thought I wanted to be a history teacher,” Huffman said. “Just imagine if I hadn’t chosen to be a writer. I never would have had the opportunity to meet so many fascinating people and tell their stories. It was a good decision on my part.”