Rose and Bill Povse of Absecon hold the Titanic section of one of their travel scrapbooks at their Absecon home.
ABSECON – Hearing about a display of artifacts from the Titanic at Shore Mall in Egg Harbor Township brought back memories for Rose and Bill Povse of Absecon.

Not memories back to 1912 – the couple, in their early 80s, laughed at the thought of that – but of a visit to Nova Scotia they took in 2004, where many of the bodies recovered from the ill-fated voyage were taken.

“We spent an hour at the cemetery, Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax, right on the St. Lawrence Seaway,” Bill Povse told a reporter invited to their home to see their photographs of the historic site. “There are graves of those from the Titanic at Fairview.”

His wife said that some 1,500 bodies were brought to the Canadian island.

“We looked at all of those graves,” Bill Povse said. “A lot of the graves just had numbers. They didn’t know who they were.”

He said they read each tombstone.

“One refers to a ‘dear son,’” Rose Povse said. “Someone had placed flowers, so maybe he has relatives who visit.”

Married for 63 years and fellow world travelers that they are, the Povses have a smooth way of finishing each others sentences.

“I worked as a cashier at Pantry Pride and then worked in the soft-count room at Caesars,” Rose Povse said. “Bill spent 32 years with Pantry Pride and then went to Caesars.”

He worked in hard count at the casino, Bill Povse said.

“I was in charge of filling the booths for cashiers,” he said. “We had seven men, and each day we loaded four tons of money into the change booths. That’s almost $1 million.”

He retired 20 years ago; his wife has been retired for 15 years.

They have stacks of scrapbooks from their trips all around the world.

“We average about 10 trips a year,” Bill Povse said. “We go with Travel With Dave. He’s a local guy. We’ve been doing this for seven years. Before that we traveled quite a bit on our own by car.”

The travel can be day trips or longer than a week, according to Povse.

“We went to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.,” Rose Povse said. “That was a day trip.”

“And we’ve been to Wellsboro, Pa.,” Bill Povse said. “That’s the Grand Canyon of the east.”

Dave Leopold, their tour guide, sees that they get the best of everything, Povse said.

The trip to Nova Scotia was eight days, and they spent about an hour at Fairview Lawn Cemetery.

“Dave told us what we were going to see,” Bill Povse said. “I just didn’t envision the layout. I was fascinated by it, thinking of the history.”

Povse said it was not a feeling of melancholy that overcame him.

“There was no sadness,” he said. “I was just absorbing the knowledge – the reality. This really happened.”

“I cried,” his wife said. “It was so sad to think of all those people who thought they were going to have a joyful voyage, and they ended up dying.”

Rose Povse is known for donating 78 handmade scarves that were sent to U.S. military personnel serving overseas last year through a joint program between Peace Lutheran Church of Galloway and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church of Absecon.

“I’m planning to make 100 for next year,” she said.

She said she and her husband haven’t been to see the Shore Mall Titanic exhibit yet, but they definitely plan to go.

The display can be viewed through May at Silver Moon Antiques. Hours are 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, noon-8 p.m. Thursday and 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. For information call (609) 277-7459.

A tombstone notes that it is the final resting place of an unidentified child whose body was recovered after the sinking of the Titanic.   Flowers indicate that perhaps family members still remember this victim of the sinking of the Titanic.