Des Moines Register 28 January 1982

TITANIC SURVIVOR DIES IN IOWA

The Register's Iowa News Service: COUNCIL BLUFFS, IA. -

Helen Marie Delaney, one of the last survivors of the sinking of the ocean liner Titanic in 1912, died Tuesday night in a Council Bluffs hospital . She was 74.

Funeral services will be held at 10 A.M. at St. Francis Worship Center here.

The fact that Miss Delaney was a survivor of the Titanic, which sank after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage on April 15, 1912, with a loss of 1,513 lives, was known to few people in Council Bluffs other than her physician, Dr. Emmet Mathiasen, and his wife, who were her close friends.

She was a very dear person. "She apparently discussed her early life with few people," Mrs. Mathisen said.

Mrs. Mathisen said Miss Delaney, a native of England, told the doctor she was four years old when she and her parents took passage on the Titanic. Her parents apparently died when the ship sank.

As Miss Delaney recounted it, Mrs. Mathisen said, after the Titanic struck the iceberg she was thrown overboard and was caught by someone in the water.

She was then placed in an orphanage in New York and came to Council Bluffs in an "orphan train" where she was adopted by Mr. & Mrs. James P. Delaney.

There are no immediate survivors.