I can still hear the band members playing a solemn tune. I can't remember what it was called now. I just remember thinking that it was fitting to hear such calm music in the chaos that surrounded me. It was freezing at life boat 8. The deck was crowded with people wanting to get into the lifeboats that were being lowered into the frigid water below. I still cant believe that my good fortune came from such a tragic and horrific accident. April 15, 1912 changed my life forever.

I was a maid of Mr. and Mrs. Straus, a loving couple that were coming back to New York after an exciting trip on the French Riviera. I had fun seeing the different things on our trip, but I wanted to get back home to my family. I really enjoyed working for the Straus'. They gave me a job when no one else would. I remember standing in the entranceway being interviewed by Mrs. Straus herself. I kept thinking to myself that they would never hire me for an upstairs maid, but imagine my surprise when she asked me to be her lady's maid instead.

The job was so much better then just an upside maid, more money, newer clothes that would be cast-offs from Mrs. Straus, and even a day off a week! I considered myself very lucky. So I wasn't as surprised when she handed me her beautiful mink fur coat.

"Here, Ellen, I won't be needing this anymore," she had said to me as she was stepping away from the lifeboat with her husband. I had begged her to get in the boat with me, take her coat back, and put it on. At the last minute she had decided to stay with Mr. Straus on the Titanic.

"We have been living together for many years, and where you go, I go," Mrs. Straus had said to her husband.

"I will not get in while there are women and children still on this ship," Mr. Struas had said after an elderly gentlemen had suggested for him to get into the lifeboat. Then they walked over to the nearby steamer chairs, sat down, watched, and waited for what was to come.

I was crying with the other women on the lifeboat as they lowered our boat down. We only had 39 people in our boat. I remembered thinking that was such a small number for a lifeboat. We could have saved so many more people. If we had just said something to the officers, but no one had thought of that.

Flare guns were being let off into the black sky. They reminded me of fireworks being let off. Soon after I saw the Titanic raise into the air and slowly sink to the waters below. And that's when you could hear the faint screams for help. My heart ached for those people. If only we would have taken more with us in our boat.

We sat in the boat until 3:30 AM waiting to be rescued. Many of us feared that would never happen. The ship, Carpathia, was seen coming to our rescue. Once they brought us on board , they took our names and the class we had been on. I stood by the rail and looked out and wondered if the Strauses had gone down with the ship, or if they had got on a lifeboat at the last minute. I didn't see them at all when I walked around the Carpathia. To my horror they had gone down with the ship.

We finally docked in New York, and I broke out into a run to reach my family. Tears streaming down my face, my father and mother's arms reached around me. I was safe at last.

The day after I got home I decided I would visit the daughter of Mr. and Mrs Straus. When I had tried to give the coat her mother gave to me she refused it.

"Mother gave it to you it should stay with you," she had said. I pulled an envelope with over two thousand dollars that was hidden in an inside pocket. She refused that as well. "Mother would have wanted you to keep that. Use it to fulfill your dreams." I walked home and didn't know what to think. What would I do with such a large sum of money?

My parents wouldn't accept the money saying the daughter was right. I should use it for myself. I decided to buy a shop with the money, and begin my own little flower shop. This little flower shop was like a Godsend. I met the man of my dreams.

Richard Lewis became my husband. We had a little boy and named him Richard JR. Ida, his younger sister, joined him a few years later. We named her after Mrs. Straus. If not for her kindness, I wouldn't have met my husband, my children, and my little flower shop.

Everyday I give thanks. Thanks for surviving. Thanks for the Straus's generosity. I do wish things would have been different. I wish the Titanic would have had enough lifeboats for all the passengers and crew. I wish we would have just taken another ship to come home. Maybe things would have been better? Maybe life would have been worse? For whatever reason God saved me and I will never forget the kindness the Strauses had shown me. I just hoped my children would remember the things I have told them about that fateful night.