Allen, John David
DeceasedVerification level: 3
Source of information: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10949786/
Stats
| Age: | 48 |
| Gender: | Male |
| Race: | Caucasian |
| Marital status: | — |
| Livelihood: | — |
Location:
Livelihood / Background / Obituary:
Construction Worker; “Nobody talked to nobody,” Eldo Allen said, his voice wrapped in grief. “That’s why we just was almost too late. If we’d been a little later they would have disposed of the bodies with ‘next of kin unknown,’ and that would have been ... “He bowed his head over a dining room table laden with family photo albums, sympathy cards from the retirement community, and the black box holding his son’s ashes, before completing his thought: “That would have been more than I could stand.”More than 4,200 still reported missing Some 18,000 people were reported lost in the wake of the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes; more than 4,200 are still reported missing in some fashion. The unprecedented number of displaced people prompted the federal government to expand the definition of missing to just about anyone who had a relative who didn’t know where they were. But despite scores of people calling around on behalf of government and nonprofit agencies, some victims, like the Allens, just fell through the cracks. John David Allen, a 48-year-old construction worker, lived with his wife, Susan, 53, in an apartment near the Biloxi waterfront. His cell phone must have been on the blink before the storm, when his parents saw maps of the swirling mass called Katrina heading his way and tried to call him. “This number is not available,” a recording said. But after the storm, the parents insisted, John would have known they were worried. He would have found a way to call. By the end of the second day after the Aug. 29 storm, Eldo Allen was on the phone with the Red Cross, which gave him a case number and told him to put his son and daughter-in-law’s names on their online list of missing people. With no leads weeks later, the Allens gave up on the Red Cross and tried the Federal Emergency Management Agency. No information available FEMA gave them a telephone number for finding missing family, which they called once or twice a week for months. The answer was always the same: No information. By December, they were certain their son was dead. The telling clue came when a Social Security official told them John was earning money until the day before the storm; since then, there’d been nothing. The same worker was able to contact people John had worked for. No one had seen him. By now, the Allens had had enough.“Where did you take the bodies?” Eldo asked a FEMA representative. “Maybe I can come down and identify them myself.”The FEMA staffer told him to try the local coroner. That was Dec. 19. A lady named Joy answered the phone at the Harrison County, Miss., coroner’s office. “She told me immediately, ‘He did not survive the storm and neither did his wife Susan and we’ve known for over two months but couldn’t find any of his family members,”’ Eldo Allen said. “So they didn’t check. They didn’t talk with FEMA, FEMA didn’t talk with them and the Red Cross didn’t talk to either.” The bodies had already been cremated. “The bodies were in such bad shape they said there was no other way,” Julia Allen said.