NEW YORK -- It was a rainy afternoon in 1927 when 10-year-old John Walter Lord Jr. made the discovery that would forever change his life.
In the library at the Towson farm of his aunt, Dorothea Deford, the Baltimore boy pulled down from a shelf a slim black volume titled "The Loss of the S.S. Titanic."
The book was written by Lawrence Beesely, a young science teacher at Dulwich College in England who had been a second-class passenger on the doomed ocean liner that had sunk so tragically and unexpectedly on April 15, 1912 -- 86 years ago today. Beesely's account detailing the disaster was one of the first ever published.
"I was hooked," says Lord, now 80. From a shelf in the study of his Manhattan apartment he takes down the Beesely book to show a visitor. "This is the book that caused all of the trouble," he says with a smile.
It's a joke on Lord's own lifelong obsession with the ship. But also on the Titanic mania now gripping the country, feeding and being fed by feature films and documentaries, Broadway musicals and books, TV specials and ocean cruises. Long before there was Leonardo DiCaprio, there was Walter Lord and his book, "A Night to Remember," which began the national fascination with the Titanic back in 1955.
"A Night to Remember" has never been out of print, but the current wave of Titanic fever has raised it to No. 2 on the paperback best-seller list for the past several weeks. For Lord, it's just the latest evidence that the "classic" story he first stumbled on 70 years ago is, in its own way, unsinkable.
Ask Walter Lord if he's had enough of the current Titanic craze and he responds cheerfully.
"I've succumbed to it," he says, waving his hands.
Unfailingly kind and courteous, he brings a genuine enthusiasm and warmth to the unending stream of callers seeking interviews. If at all possible, he never turns down a request, patiently listening and answering questions as though he's being asked them for the first time.
"I get four or five requests a day. Even small-town radio stations in Arkansas have finally discovered me," he says with a laugh.
The phone rings again. He agrees to give an interview to several Australians later that afternoon. Meanwhile, the fax machine at the side of his desk brings an invitation to speak to the Smithsonian.
At age 80, Lord, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, is dressed this morning in dark corduroy pants with a sweater thrown over his shoulders and tied in collegiate fashion around his neck.
