One of the 706 survivors of the sinking of the Titanic, Navratil was the only male still alive (today only four other survivors, all women, remain alive).
He was not quite four years old when his father grabbed him in the middle of the night after the ship hit an iceberg. “My father entered our cabin where we were sleeping. He dressed me very warmly and took me in his arms. A stranger did the same for my brother. When I think of it now, I am very moved. They knew they were going to die. I don’t recall being afraid, I remember the pleasure, really, of going plop into the lifeboat.”
His father indeed was one of the 1,480 who died that night in April, 1912. Navratil went on to become a professor of philosophy, saying that the disaster, and his ordeal in proving his identity so he could be reunited with his mother in France, influenced his thinking throughout his life. He died January 31 in France at age 92.