Displaying title of first message of a topic on the topic page?

Happy holidays!

We'd like to display the title of the first message of a topic on the topic page. Is there a way to pull the title of the title of the first message (e.g. the original topic title) via the rest API? The goal is to make sure that every single page has the original topic title displayed in full.

Here's a screencast showing what I mean: http://screencast.com/t/tuaRYTIbpd0

In the screencast, the goal is to always have the title at the top of the topic page say: "Difficulty getting a new Force wrist band on". The current behavior changes the title of the page, because it takes you to the latest unread post on the topic, and makes the title of the page the title of that post. We always want the title on the topic page to be the title of the original post.

Thanks!