Wendy Rush, wife of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who has been missing in a submersible after embarking on an expedition to see the wreckage of the Titanic, is related to victims of the Titanic sinking, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Wendy Rush is the great-great-granddaughter of Isidor and Ida Straus, according to The New York Times. The Strauses were first-class passengers, with Isidor being a co-owner of the department store R.H. Macy.
The Strauses died together when the Titanic sank in April 1912. Reports indicate that Isidor Straus was offered a seat, he did not want to leave the ship until all women and children had been removed. Ida Straus was also offered a lifeboat seat while the ship was in peril, but she refused to leave her husband, who was still on the boat.
The couple was last seen standing together on the ship before it went under. Isidor Straus’s body was found two weeks following the sinking of the Titanic while Ida Straus’s remains were never found, an archived New York Times article states. Hundreds of people attended the Strauses’ funeral to the point that Carnegie Hall’s auditorium was at full capacity.
Director James Cameron included a fictionalized version of the Strauses in his 1997 film “Titanic,” where an elderly couple decides to lay in bed together while water floods into their cabin during the sinking of the ship.
Straus family history
According to The New York Times and Executive Director of the Straus Historical Society Joan Adler, Wendy Rush was born as Wendy Hollings Weil and is related to Minnie Straus, one of Ida and Isidor Strauses’ daughters.
Minnie Straus married Dr. Richard Weil and had their son, Richard Weil Jr., Wendy Rush’s grandfather. His, son Dr. Richard Weil III, is Wendy Rush’s father.
Live updates on the Titan:Missing Titanic submersible live updates: Has oxygen run out? Urgent search continues
Wendy Rush and Stockton Rush married in 1986. Stockton Rush is currently missing along with Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, and British explorer Hamish Harding.
OceanGate, Stockton Rush’s company founded in 2009, was conducting an underwater expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic on June 18 when the submersible lost connection with its support ship. Search efforts for the submersible have been underway since Sunday, and it is believed that the passengers may have less than 24 hours of oxygen left.
According to Wendy Rush’s LinkedIn page, she is OceanGate’s director of communications and has participated in three past OceanGate journeys to the Titanic site.
More on the Titanic:Where is the Titanic wreck located? What to know after submersible goes missing in Atlantic
Contributing: Anushka Patil, The New York Times
