6A • COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • NOVEMBER 14, 2018
Titanic Coat making trek from Cottage Grove to nation’s capitol
By Caitlyn May
cmay@cgsentinel.com
Marion Woolcott’s coat
had already made its way
across the sea on the Titanic
to New York before landing
in Cottage Grove. But earli-
er this year, it made another
journey.
Th e coat is currently on
loan from the Cottage Grove
Museum to the Nation-
al Geographic Museum in
Washington, D.C. as part of
the institution’s exhibit, “Ti-
tanic, the Untold Story.”
“We were told the coat was
a main item,” said Cottage
Grove Museum board mem-
ber Mary Jo O’Fallon who
made the trip to D.C. with
fellow board members and
volunteers Becky Venice,
Cathy Bellavita and Tara Sue
Hughart.
When Woolcott landed in
New York in 1912 as a Titan-
ic survivor, she had already
sent a letter home to her par-
ents detailing the events of
the catastrophe that would
catapult its way through his-
tory, to the big screen and
settle in the imagination of a
generation.
What made Woolcott’s
voyage on the doomed ship
unique wasn’t the journey,
but the destination. She
wasn’t headed for California
or an extended stay in New
York like the majority of the
passengers.
She was headed for a small
town in the Willamette Val-
ley to join her future hus-
band Arthur where they
would eventually buy an or-
chard, have children and be
buried. But not before fi nd-
ing a bit of local celebrity
and subsequently, handing
down history.
In the middle of the Cot-
PHOTO COURTESY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC STAFF
Local museum board members and volunteers Cathy Bellavitta, Tara Sue Hughart, Mary Jo O'Fallon and Becky Venice traveled to D.C. to see a Cottage
Grove Titanic artifact displayed at the National Geographic Museum.
tage Grove Museum there’s
an empty glass case that
usually houses the coat Irish
tourists and movie-watch-
ing children come to see. It’s
the coat Woolcott wrote of
in letters home as she made
the journey from the sink-
ing Titanic to New York. It’s
the coat she had in her pos-
session when she landed on
dry land again and the coat
she passed on to her sons
and eventually, the Cottage
Grove Museum.
“When her sons went to
war, she cut pieces from the
coat and wrapped bibles in
them,” said Bellavitta previ-
ously told Th e Sentinel. All
three sons made it home but
the bibles have never been
found and in 1967, Wool-
cott’s oldest son, John, do-
nated the coat to the muse-
um.
Th e evidence left behind
on the coat from where
Woolcott cut scraps to save
her sons is a big draw in
D.C., according to the local
group that made the trip. So,
is the coat itself.
“On the metro, on the way
to the hotel, we looked over
and there’s a couple with
the catalog for the exhibit,”
Bellavitta said. Th e groups
struck up a conversation
and soon the couple realized
Bellavitta and company had
traveled to see their home-
town exhibit. “Th ey said,
‘Oh, are you from Cottage
Grove?’”
Th e exhibit, on display
through Jan. 1, was devel-
oped through a collabora-
tion between the National
Archives and the Ronald
Regan Presidential Library.
In addition to the Wool-
cott coat, it also includes an
8,000-pound module that
famed explorer Robert Bal-
lard used to survey the Ti-
tanic on the ocean fl oor.
Th e coat is expected to
make its way back to Cot-
tage Grove in January. In ex-
change for allowing the coat
to be displayed, the museum
will receive a new dress form
and case to house the coat
when it returns home.
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