Letters Tell Story Of Titanic Victim First-Class Passage Aboard Steamer Was A Last Luxury For Pomeroy Pioneer
A pile of photographs and newspaper clippings provides clues to John Bert Brady of Pomeroy.
Together they paint a picture of a seemingly perfect life. A private school education in Portland as a teen. Third baseman on Pomeroy’s baseball team at 20 and before 40, vice president of the Pomeroy Savings Bank.
Brady even had enough money to secure first-class passage on the Titanic, rubbing shoulders with some of America’s wealthiest families.
It was that luxury, the last of his life, more than being a leading Pomeroy citizen, that secured Brady a spot in the history books and now on numerous Web sites.
That turn-of-the-century Pomeroy was home to a wealthy globe-trotter doesn’t surprise Quest Keatts and Margaret Wolf of the Garfield County Museum.
After all, many Garfield County residents still had relatives in Europe, and some, even those of lesser means, made regular visits.
The town was thriving. Dozens of stores sold everything from harnesses to jewelry. There was hope that opal and onyx mining, drilling oil or operating a railroad to transport logs from the nearby forests would turn Pomeroy into a trade center.
Brady lived in the middle of the excitement, inheriting the top position at his father’s store as a young man and gaining a one-third share in the Weller Live Stock Co.
In the days following the Titanic tragedy, stories in the East Washingtonian suggest Pomeroy residents waited anxiously, hoping somehow Brady had been saved.
With the telephone in its infancy, the uncertainty stretched almost a week, with the chances of Brady’s survival growing dimmer by the day.
First came news that few men escaped because of the limited number of lifeboats. At this point “slight hopes were still entertained for Mr. Brady’s safety by some of his friends in Pomeroy.”
Then Brady’s relatives learned that no one from the Titanic had been rescued by the Virginian and the Parisian, two ships people thought might have responded to the disaster.
“This avenue of escape was also cut off and the last ray of hope dispelled.”
Finally Brady’s death was all but confirmed when a friend found Brady wasn’t among those on the Carpathia, the ship that rescued those in the lifeboats.
In frequent letters written in the months before setting sail on the Titanic, Brady seems carefree and happy - enjoying a vacation in Europe, but also enthused about his home in Pomeroy.
From the Grand Central Hotel in Belfast, Brady wrote, “I am over amongst my friends. You bet they are all right. I like it over here. One can have a good time here.”
The letters also indicate that Brady worried more about a coal strike than rough seas interfering with his travels. He came close to booking his journey on a different vessel.
“I am booked to sail April 10th on the new steamer Titanic - first trip across. But it’s such a thing she can’t go on account of the coal strike.
“May not get on so I am going to the German book today and book on them for about the same date. They will surely (have) coal, so if I don’t get off on the Titanic I will go on the other.”
Yet he still had faith in the Titanic. “Ought to be in N.Y. about the 17th as it is such a fine boat.” Once Brady boards the Titanic, the letters stop, leaving the last days of his life a mystery.
An obituary in the East Washingtonian describes him as a “Pomeroy pioneer,” who arrived in town with his family in 1879.
By the time he was in his mid 20s, he had established himself as a major player in the town’s affairs. He was a founder of the Pomeroy Improvement Co., created to promote milling, manufacturing, building and “in every other way to promote the welfare and interests of the place,” according to an article from the Washington Independent Newspaper in 1887.
The paper says this about one of his banking ventures in 1886: “We need such things in Garfield County and at Pomeroy. This bank has the strongest backing in the territory.”
More positive press follows when the bank constructs a new building fitted with “all the modern conveniences suggested by culture and taste. … Let us say that this building is a credit to the town and country. It will stand as a lasting monument of their enterprise and to adorn the town for generations to come.”
The building is now Pomeroy’s senior center. Brady had stature in social clubs as well, belonging to the Masons in Pomeroy and the Shriners in Spokane.
“He had a wide circle of acquaintances, including some very close friends to whom his untimely and tragic death comes as a severe personal bereavement as well as an almost overwhelming weight of grief to his relatives,” according to the East Washingtonian obituary.
One of those who probably missed Brady the most was Bertha Houser, who would have been 34 when the Titanic sank.
The two were courting when Brady died. Viewed from almost a century away, the attraction is easy to understand. Like Brady, Houser was a world traveler, said Bill Larson of Clarkston, one of Houser’s heirs.
She explored foreign countries looking for scenes to paint. Brady’s obituary only hints of their connection. It is a Houser who drives Brady’s brother-in-law to Walla Walla as he’s rushing home to Portland after the Titanic sinks.
But the pair exchanged letters so personal that her family decided not to donate them to the museum. Houser never married. Houser’s family discovered the letters along with clippings about the Titanic when they were taking apart the house of a relative, Larson said.