Joseph Zupicich’s Life Beyond the Sea

A Sailor Remembered in Shamokin

In March 1968, reporter Harry J. Deitz interviewed Shamokin grocer Joseph Zupicich about his years at sea. Zupicich remembered being aboard the Carpathia when it rescued survivors of the Titanic in April 1912. The story appeared on the front page of the Shamokin News-Dispatch with his grocery portrait and continued on page 16. Its setting joined two parts of his life: an ocean voyage remembered after more than half a century, and a neighborhood business in the city where he had settled.

An official crew-list catalog provides a strong connection to that recollection. The National Archives in Britain lists Giuseppe Zupivich, age nineteen, in the Carpathia’s April 1912 crew material. His job is recorded as waiter. Chief and assistant third-class stewards are listed separately on the same pages, so the waiter classification should not be replaced with a supervisory title from the later interview. The matching name and age support the connection, although the catalog entry alone does not trace the young crewman into his later Shamokin life.

From the Sea to the Mines

Zupicich told Deitz that he came to Shamokin with former Carpathia associates Pete Vlatich and Anthony Pereich and took up mining. He also recalled a 1921 explosion that cost him his left hand and forearm. These details carry the interview beyond the famous rescue. They describe a change of country and occupation followed by an injury that profoundly altered the working life he remembered.

Two records made much nearer the accident add important detail. Pennsylvania’s mine-accident register lists a nonfatal January 5, 1921 dynamite explosion at Bear Valley involving a twenty-eight-year-old Austrian miner whose handwritten name appears as Joe Gutisick. The following day, the Pottsville Republican reported serious injuries to Joseph Zupick of Shamokin, including the loss of his left hand. The age, locality, occupation, date, and accident circumstances make a connection to Zupicich probable, rather than certain.

The newspaper itself used two mine names: Bear Valley in the headline and Bear Ridge in the article. The register gives Bear Valley; which mine name the newspaper intended remains uncertain. Nor should the alarming first-day description of his injuries be treated as a final account of his recovery. The man speaking to Deitz in 1968 had survived; his own later recollection described the loss of his hand and forearm.

A Grocery on West Pine Street

A September 1953 telephone directory lists Zupicick’s Grocery Store at 946 West Pine Street. The name appears in both the alphabetical and grocery listings. That is a firm dated address for a family-name business, though the directory does not identify its legal owner. The 1968 interview gives two different beginnings for the store: 1921 on the front page and 1923 in the continuation. The directory confirms the grocery by 1953 without deciding between those earlier dates.

Zupicich’s story is therefore larger than a link to the Titanic. It follows remembered shipboard work, movement inland, the dangers of mining, and a grocery’s place in neighborhood life. The documents add anchors without smoothing away every difference in spelling or date. Keeping those distinctions allows the ocean story and the daily work that followed to remain part of one carefully told life.