Funeral tears for boat kin
Tragic dad wouldn’t leave his kids
Four victims of the tragic duck boat sinking were mourned at a funeral at an Indiana church Friday, where Bishop G. Victor Morrisey Jr. said that one of them, Glenn Coleman, “could have saved himself, [but] wouldn’t leave his kids.’’
Morrisey told the congregation at Grace Apostolic Church that he believes Glenn, who was 40, made a heroic attempt to rescue his three youngsters. But he perished along with Reece, 9, Evan, 7, and Arya, 1.
“I believe Glenn could have saved himself,’’ he said.
“But he wanted to make sure his family was going to be all right . . . He was able to corral all of his family together — his two sons and his baby.’’
His wife, Tia, who survived, said right after the ship went under, and her husband was pulled out of the stormy Ozark lake, “he had all three of my babies.’’ The disaster left 17 died. The master of ceremonies at the funeral, Nicole Young Starks, read a statement from the Coleman family that said Arya was “the first girl in a family with many boys,’’ but it didn’t go to her head. She may have been raised as a “princess,’’ but the toddler was as “tough as her brothers.’’
“So we had to accept that she was a rough princess,” Starks said, quoting the family’s statements.
Reece, according to Starks, had autism and loved to sing.
Evan “had a heart of gold” and was “very cooperative” and “good-spirited.”
Tia’s employer, Marion County, Ind., Prosecutor Terry Curry, added that the tragedy “reminds me that we are ultimately a good people despite the divisive, caustic rhetoric that we hear from some.
“We’re still in touch with our good nature,” he said.
Another funeral was held Saturday for Horace Coleman, 70; his wife Belinda, 69; his brother, Irvin, 76; his daughter, Angela, 45, and Angela’s son Maxwell, 2. Hundreds of mourners attended the two events.
Besides Tia, the only member of her family who survived was nephew Donovan Coleman, 13.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Friday that the water had been calm when the boat went out, and that the captain had also checked weather reports and insured life jackets were in place. Dangerous whitecaps and winds kicked up mere minutes later.