Rescued from the rising waters of Hurricane Katrina at his New Orleans home, John Kelly Sr. and his daughter were taken by boat to the Broad Street overpass and told to wait for a bus to take them to safety.
It never arrived.
For three sweltering days, the 84-year-old ebullient man known as J.K. to his friends was stranded with more than 100 others on the concrete and steel structure.
His daughter, Gloria Lindsey, 57, tried to help him the best she could. A diabetic with high blood pressure, Kelly did not have his insulin or medication. They had no food. A heat index higher than 100 degrees soon scorched him through his clothes and left his slippered feet badly sunburned and blistered.
Eventually evacuated by helicopter to a Baton Rouge, La., hospital, Kelly suffered a stroke. He was then transported to a son’s home in Aurora and then to the Sable Care Center.
But he never recovered from his ordeal. He died Sunday morning, an unofficial victim of the hurricane.
“He did everything for himself,” recalled 65-year-old John Kelly Jr. of his father, who cooked his own meals and cleaned his own home. “That storm took it out.”
Kelly is survived by five children. His wife of 57 years, Edrine Kelly, died in 1996 at age 75.
A retired truck driver, Kelly was an avid musician who learned to play the piano from his mother and was a regular fixture at New Orleans parties, entertaining with his voice and deft touch on the keys, especially on Professor Longhair songs.
“He could play the piano like some people walk,” said Kelly Jr., who led his father to one in his Aurora home shortly after his arrival. “He went to the piano but he couldn’t hit a key. I knew right then, something’s awful.”
Despite being in pain while waiting on that bridge, Kelly never complained, his daughter recalled.
“I would tell him, ‘Don’t give up, they’re going to come get us,’ and he would say ‘OK”‘ in a cheerful voice, said Lindsey, a phlebotomist. “But I could tell he was getting weaker.”
While Lindsey and Kelly waited at the bridge, Kelly’s other son, 63-year-old Shahed Muhammad, who lived nearby, was taken to the Louisiana Superdome.
“It was like we were in hell,” said Muhammad, a retired police officer, of his time there before he was taken to the airport and then to Colorado. With his wife, Cheryl Johnson, 50, missing for a while, Muhammad stayed at the airport, searching Red Cross computer databases for family members.
He found them all except for a cousin, Joseph Johnson.
Now reunited in Aurora at the home of Kelly Jr., a retired postal worker and part-time boat salesman, Muhammad, his wife and Lindsey have decided to stay in Colorado.
They have not yet ventured back to their business district homes in New Orleans, where Lindsey, Muhammad and Kelly Sr. all lived near each other. They fear everything is lost, but mostly fret for their family pictures in the home of Kelly Sr.
They had only his driver’s license photo to give to the funeral home. His services are scheduled for Friday at 11 a.m. at the Taylor Funeral Home, 15057 East Colfax Ave., No. H, in Aurora.
“I had been hearing about Katrina victims but when you have families here burying their loved ones, it makes it all real,” said funeral-home owner Lequita Taylor.
Staff writer Amy Herdy can be reached at 303-820-1752 or aherdy@denverpost.com.
