Michel and his younger brother, Edmond Roger, age two, were among the survivors rescued by the Carpathia. Sadly, their father went down with the ship. Unable to speak anything but French, the children could not relay the names of their parents. For a short time, they remained unclaimed. Finally, "Lolo" and "Momon" as they called themselves, left the ship under the care of Margaret Bechstein Hays, a fellow passenger who was fluent in French.
It would be several weeks before the boys' history was reconstructed and they were reunited with their mother. It would be just short of a century before Michel M. Navratil would be at his father's final resting place and the elder Navratil's past rectified.
On August 27, 1996, eighty-eight year old Michel M. Navratil visited his father's grave for the first time. Accompanying him was author Charles Pellegrino, the scientist who accompanied Robert Ballard on voyages to Titanic's watery grave, and author of HER NAME TITANIC. Navratil, touched by what he called his father's presence, enchanted Pellegrino with a tale that would dispel the awful rumors that had plagued his father's name. The story he would tell would go far beneath the stormy appearance portrayed in histories of the Titanic and straight into Pellegrino's heart.
"The lesson I learned that day is one that I will always carry with me," says Pellegrino. "As an archeologist, I must forever keep in mind that one needs oral history to go with the findings to see them in the proper perspective."
The elder Navratil was twenty-two when he perished on the sinking Titanic. His final act of love was to hand over his beloved infant sons and see them placed in one of the last spots on collapsible lifeboat "D." Then, with his heart broken, he would step back into the crowd.
