Titanic’s Michel Navratil Lives to See the Internet age
After returning to France with his mother and brother in May 1912, Michel Navratil thrived in academia. At university, he married a fellow student in 1933. After earning his doctorate, he became a philosophy professor at the University of Montpellier in southeastern France. He lived to see Robert Ballard discover the Titanic, where he lost his father so many years ago. In 1987, he went to the United States to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the disaster. He returned to North America in 1996 to visit his father’s grave. Michel is described as a “very quiet individual and was very interested in what people had to say. After all, he was a professor of philosophy,” says Edward Kamuda, founder of the Titanic Historical Society of Springfield, Massachusetts. The last male survivor of Titanic, Michel passed away at age 92 in January 2001.