70 Years Later, Resident Reflects On Sinking





Barbara Rodman Wilson

Barbara Rodman Wilson

The popular phrase “don’t sweat the small stuff” takes on a greater meaning after you hear Garden City resident Barbara Rodman Wilson’s story.

“When people get upset with petty things, I look at them and say, ‘Why are you concerned about that? Why? You’re here, you’re living, be grateful,” Wilson said as she sat in the living room of her home one recent evening.

Wilson has made an effort to appreciate every day since the day almost 70 years ago when she nearly lost her life aboard the S.S. Athenia, the first British ship to be sunk by Germany during World War II. She had booked passage on the ship, anxious to return home after a European vacation before the war further intensified.

It was 7:30 in the evening, on September 3, 1939, when Wilson was persuaded by a stewardess on board to go to the dining room to eat a light meal in an attempt to help ease her seasickness. She would forever be grateful to that woman, whom she believes went down with the ship as it was suddenly hit moments after by a torpedo.

“I had never seen a dying person, or a dead person, in my life,” she sadly recalls. “Well, I sure did that night.” There were 1,418 people aboard the Athenia, including many women and children. A total of 98 passengers and 19 crew members were killed.

Although the skin on the front of both legs was gone (she can’t remember exactly how it happened), Wilson was able to make her way through darkened corridors to a flight of stairs leading to the deck. She was fortunate enough to catch a life jacket that was being thrown through the air. Wilson distinctly remembers the moment when she was about to descend a rope ladder and a crew member grabbed her pocketbook and tossed it overboard, saying, “Never mind that, lady. Save yourself.”

The climb down the ladder was not easy, but Wilson had always been athletically inclined. (In later years, her athletic prowess would earn her many tennis trophies, especially during the 1950s when she became the women’s singles champion six times at the Garden City Casino tennis club.) When she was approximately six to eight feet from the water, the rope ladder became twisted. People were on every rung, and the lifeboat had drifted slightly away from the Athenia.

Just as she feared that she would lose her grip, she was thrown a rope from a man in the lifeboat. She used that precious lifeline to swing herself into the lifeboat. For 10 hours, the boat drifted aimlessly in rough waters and rainy weather. Wilson remembers her arms and legs shivering from the cold. At one point, the lifeboat came perilously close to the Athenia’s propeller, which would have meant immediate death. Wilson said she was just a few feet away from the propeller when the lifeboat miraculously shifted course in another direction.

The lifeboat was eventually rescued by the British Navy. Wilson remembers being skeptical at first, certain that it was the German Navy who sought to capture the survivors and inter them in concentration camps. She said it didn’t take her long before she was served a cup of hot tea and realized she was gratefully in the hands of a U.S. ally.

The 34 people in Wilson’s lifeboat were taken to Glasgow, where she recalls the residents were extremely welcoming and generous. She was given 10 shilling, which she used to purchase a variety of items, including a toothbrush and comb. Wilson thinks she still has the coat she was given by a kind stranger. She recalls with a laugh that it was a hideous color, but she thought at the time it was beautiful simply because it was able to keep her warm.

Her family back in New York was initially told she was among the dead. However, once she arrived in Glasgow she was able to send a telegram. Wilson recalls that she was being especially prudent since the money being expended was not her own, so she decided to send a message that got right to the point: “Safe.” She would travel home two weeks later, but then later during the war, she returned to England, France and Germany, working for the Red Cross to help Allied bomber crews who were injured during skirmishes.

Wilson said up until then she would describe herself as a reticent person. During her college years at Wellesley, the public speaking course she was required to take was one of her worst.

However, she readily admits that she changed after this near-death experience. Public speaking was no longer dreaded. Days after her harrowing rescue, she unhesitatingly accepted an invitation to be interviewed by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

“When I talk about it, I’m not really reliving it as such,” she explains. “If I did, I think I would go crazy because it was just one of the most horrible things.”

Her physical injuries healed within four months. However, she said it would take six months before the nightmares subsided. Upon returning to New York, Wilson wrote and typed her story on paper, which she keeps with albums of newspaper clippings, letters, telegrams and other memorabilia her parents saved from that time.

She says she can still recall the details of what occurred on the Athenia without referencing her notes and the yellowed news articles. “I can talk about it and I know what happened,” she says. “It’s very vivid in my mind to this day. It just was incredible that a thing like that could happen, such a dastardly crime.”

Wilson eventually married Robert Edward Wilson in the late 1940s and settled in Garden City. She has been a very active member of the community, and was recently named a 2009 Woman of Distinction by New York State Assemblyman Tom McKevitt.

She continues to speak about her ordeal today. As the 70th anniversary approaches, Wilson has accepted invitations to speak before local groups and has conducted telephone interviews with several British media outlets. A recent interview she did with NBC News at the Garden City Public Library will be aired on Sept. 3rd between 6 and 7 a.m. on the “Today” show.



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