Calvary Cemetery
Section 10, Block J, Lot 11
Dayton Ohio
Went to Calvary for the first time on August 17th, 2014. It's somewhat unusual because it is the only Catholic Cemetery I've been to that has had signs next to notable people. The cemetery website also lists notable people. Here is one of 3 (that I currently know about) passengers on the Titanic buried in Ohio.
Philip Zenni was one of only 59 third-class male passengers to survive.
It was the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, and the third lifeboat was being lowered from the doomed Titanic barely a third full. The only Dayton-bound passenger — a 22-year-old Lebanese man named Philip Zenni — tried to jump aboard, but was held back by an officer with a gun yelling, “Women first!”
Male passengers — even John Jacob Astor, one of the world’s wealthiest men — were being turned out of lifeboats, even when they were less than half full, on the women-and-children first principle. Zenni wasn’t buying it.
He tried another unsuccessful attempt to board. Moments later, the officer turned away and Zenni leapt onto Lifeboat 6, later made famous by the movie “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.”
One of only five men among the lifeboat’s 26 passengers, Zenni described rowing furiously for two miles guided only by the morning star. He was one of only 59 of the Titanic’s 440 third-class male passengers who survived the disaster. His great-grandson, Tom Heiser, 32, of Beavercreek, is grateful for Zenni’s strong survival instinct and courage. “He was a go-getter, and he had just gotten married,” Heiser explained. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.”
Heiser and his wife, Jessica, and their son, Jesse, 8, and daughter, Jossni, 4, joined 50 other family members at Zenni’s grave site in Calvary Cemetery Sunday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking. At 2 p.m., 100 bells were tolled from the cemetery’s historic St. Henry’s chapel.
Zenni embarked in Cherbourg, France, April 10, 1912. (He is listed on the ship roster as Fahim Leeni — his first name in Lebanese and a misspelling of his last name.)
He happened to land in the most notorious lifeboat of all, in which Margaret “Molly” Brown famously fought with the lifeboat’s commander, Robert Hitchens, urging him to return to the ship and rescue drowning passengers. When Hitchens refused, Brown attempted to grab the tiller and urged the other women on board to join her in an insurrection. “My great-grandfather could hear the people crying out, and he never forgot that,” Heiser said.
Zenni cheated death for a mere 15 years; he died of pneumonia in 1927 at the age of 38. But he lived long enough to father three daughters and one son, Heiser’s maternal grandfather, Jeffery.
Zenni’s grave is marked by a blue flag in the cemetery’s Section 10. (For cemetery maps and information, visit www.calvarycemeterydayton.org.)
Zenni moved to Dayton to join his brothers and sisters who already had emigrated. During his Dayton years, he was nicknamed “Mr. Titanic” because of his frequent speeches in the area.
Nazera Woodie of Dayton, Zenni’s only surviving child, contacted Calvary Cemetery in 2002 to let them know about the remarkable history of the man buried in the simple tombstone that bears his name in both English and Cyrillic.
She remembered her father as a handsome man and a sharp dresser, sporting a diamond ring and diamond cufflinks, with a vivacious, bigger-than-life personality. He was a successful entrepreneur, opening a confectionery store and a pool hall and owning the city’s first ice cone maker. Zenni’s grave is now part of Calvary’s history tour of notable souls among the 75,000 buried in the traditionally Catholic cemetery.
While Zenni is the only Dayton-area Titanic survivor, Ed Breen’s grandfather, John P. Breen, had a very close call. Breen and his brother-in-law and business partner, John Ohmer of the Ohmer-Fare Register Company, had been to Europe for a business trip selling the taxi meter they invented.
“They decided to go back to New York in style and book first-class passage on the maiden voyage of the Titanic,” said Breen, 54, of Kettering. “Business was so good they decided to make more money and postponed their voyage by two weeks and go back on the second voyage.
Zenni’s well-worn traveling suitcase is one of the family’s most treasured mementos. Heiser brought it with him Saturday night when his extended family attended LaComedia Dinner Theater’s performance of “Titanic,” which is running through April 29. “It made me feel like he was there with me that night,” said Heiser, who spoke to the audience before the show.
People often tell Heiser that he resembles his celebrated great-grandfather physically, but more than that, he hopes to emulate his character.
“He had such a successful, driven attitude,” he said. “That’s why I’m so inspired by him.”
- See more at: http://calvarycemeterydayton.flarecode.com/philip-zenni#sthash.ZfF4Mpgr.dpuf
