SALISBURY, N.C. - With hymns and prayers for answers, family and friends gathered at a North Carolina church on Saturday to bid farewell to Thomas Eric Duncan, the first known person to die of Ebola in the United States.
Mr. Duncan's mother sat weeping with other relatives in the front row of the small, red-carpeted sanctuary of the church they attend here, Rowan International Church. About 30 other congregants stood and sang 'I Must Tell Jesus' and 'We have a God who never fails.'
A slide show of photos of Mr. Duncan in Liberia played in a loop over the dais. In eulogies, relatives remembered him as a giving man who had shown courage throughout his life, even as bullets flew during the Liberian civil war, and who had contracted Ebola most likely when he helped carry a sick woman shortly before he made his long-awaited journey to the United States.
'Let's not forget how he died. He died helping someone,' said Harry Korkoryah, who said he was Mr. Duncan's half-brother. 'He answered that call from God.'
Undercurrents of frustration and doubt ran throughout the morning service. 'Where did Ebola come from to destroy people?' Bishop Arthur F. Kulah of the United Methodist Church in Liberia, one of at least nine members of the clergy from various churches at the service, sermonized. 'To set behind people who were already behind?'
Several relatives who spoke implied strongly that they did not believe the hospital's or officials' narratives of what happened to Mr. Duncan during his illness in Dallas.
'The day will come when we all have answers for what happened to my brother,' Mr. Duncan's nephew Josephus Weeks said.
Posted by Unknown on Saturday, October 18, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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