Lillian Gertrud Asplund (October 21, 1906 – May 6, 2006) was a Swedish-American secretarial worker who was one of the last three living survivors of the sinking of on April 15, 1912, and the last survivor who could recall the disaster. Early life Lillian Asplund was born on October 21, 1906, in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States, to Carl and Selma (née Johansson) Asplund, both immigrants from Sweden. Her parents had lived briefly in Missouri prior to settling in Worcester. Lillian had a twin brother, Carl, and two older brothers, Filip (born 1898) and Clarence (born 1902). In 1907, Lillian's family received word that Lillian's paternal grandfather had died back in Sweden. As her father was the executor of his estate, the family made arrangements to return to Sweden to settle the estate of the family farm, located near the village of Alseda in Småland. Lillian, her parents and three brothers sailed from Boston aboard the Cunard Line's Ivernia and arrived in Liverpool on July 4, from where they proceeded to Gothenburg before arriving at Alseda. The family remained at Alseda for over four years while settling matters with the farm and caring for Lillian's grandmother, during which time Selma gave birth to another son, Felix, in March 1909. Lillian's mother would have rather stayed in Sweden, but her father said the children would get a better education back in America and booked passage for his family on the new White Star Line's Titanic. Aboard Titanic Lillian, her parents, and four brothers boarded Titanic at Southampton, England, United Kingdom, on April 10, 1912, as third-class passengers. Lillian was five years old at the time and recalled that the ship "was very big, and it had just been painted. I remember not liking the smell of fresh paint." Selma Asplund recalled that when Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 pm on the night of April 14, 1912, the family got to the first class promenade window where Lillian and Felix were loaded into descending lifeboat no. 10 by their father. Despite her mother's wishes to remain with her husband, she eventually was thrown in the boat; Lillian later recalled, "My mother said she would rather stay with him [my father] and go down with the ship. But he said the children should not be alone. She [my mother] got a seat. She had Felix on her lap, and she had me between