Special Thursday Edition: Modeling the Titanic with Greg Gikas

April 10, 2025
12:00pm - 1:00pm

Gregory Gikas will be at a special edition of Lunch With Books at the Ohio County Public Library on Thursday, April 10 at noon to talk about his amazing scale model of the HMS Titanic, the infamous, "unsinkable" mega-passenger liner that sank on April 15, 1912 after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,500 passengers and crew. Gikas is a retired WPHS teacher from Warwood. Since childhood, he has loved art and history and in retirement, he took up woodcarving. Now, he's able to combine all three passions to create extraordinary, meticulously detailed scale models of historic vessels like the USS West Virginia (struck by torpedoes at Pear Harbor in 1941), which took six months to build. Most incredibly, the ship was crafted from scraps of wood and metal (like dryer and vent pipes) that neighbors threw away. And the ship parts move. “The big guns–the turret guns (made from nails)–they move almost 360 degrees,” said Gikas. Gikas learned a lot of his skills by watching his late father “He could paint, he could carve,” Gikas recalled. “And I used to watch him build things when I was a little kid...And that’s how I got started.” Mr. Gikas will bring his scale model of the Titanic, a 52 1/2 inch behemoth, which took him 8 1/2 months to build. The ship will remain on display at the Library after the talk.

Lunch With Books Livestream starts at noon on Facebook and YouTube.

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"Lunch With Books" is the library’s flagship program for adult patrons. These lunchtime programs feature authors, poets, musicians, historians, and more every Tuesday at noon. Bring lunch (to the Library Auditorium or your computer), feed your brain!