The wife of OceanGate CEO and Titan pilot Stockton Rush has direct ties to the sunken ship he and four others were hoping to see when their submersible disappeared this week.
According to the New York Times, Wendy Rush — who has gone on at least three different expeditions to the Titanic wreckage herself over the past two years — is the great great-granddaughter of Isidor and Ida Straus, who died aboard the ocean liner in 1912. Isidor and his brother Nathan were co-owners of Macy’s department store.
Before their deaths, the Strauses welcomed seven children together, including daughter Minnie, who married Dr. Richard Weil in 1905. Citing the executive director of the Straus Historical Society, the Times reports that Minnie and Richard’s son, Richard Weil III — who later became president of Macy’s New York — is Wendy’s father.
According to survivors, due to their wealth and notoriety, Ida and Isidor were granted the option to board a lifeboat as the ship was sinking … but he refused, because there were women and children who were still waiting to do the same.
“My great-grandmother Ida stepped into the lifeboat expecting that her husband would follow,” their great-grandson Paul A. Kurzman told TODAY in 2017. “When he didn’t follow, she was very concerned and the ship’s officer in charge of lowering that particular lifeboat said, ‘Well, Mr. Straus, you’re an elderly man … and we all know who you are … Of course, you can enter the lifeboat with your wife.'”
“And, my great-grandfather said, ‘No. Until I see that every woman and child on board this ship is in a lifeboat, I will not enter into a lifeboat myself,'” he shared.
This moment was fictionalized in James Cameron’s “Titanic” film, but was only included as one of its deleted scenes. The released version of the movie, however, shows the pair holding one another in bed as the ship sank.
Though Isidor’s body was recovered two weeks after the tragedy, Ida’s was never found.