27267: Hermantin(news)Nameless and unclaimed, but not forgotten (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Leonie Hermantin

Posted on Sun, Jan. 15, 2006

Miami Herald

Nameless and unclaimed, but not forgotten
Twenty-four years after a group of Haitians washed ashore on South Florida 
beaches as a result of a freighter wreck, 12 remain unidentified and unclaimed.
BY LUISA YANEZ
lyanez@MiamiHerald.com

The sea smashed the wooden freighter to bits, pulled the Haitians under water 
and then, day by day, spat their bodies back along condo-studded beaches from 
Broward to Palm Beach counties. Authorities recovered the bodies of 21 men and 
women, victims of the nighttime sinking of the 49-foot Esperancia in March 
1982. Six men survived.

Nine were mourned by loved ones.

But 12 others were lost in time, never claimed, never identified.

Today, they remain entries in the FLorida UnIdentified Decedents DataBase, a 
website created in 2002, maintained by the state's 24 medical examiner 
districts and used by law enforcement officials in Florida and nationwide to 
match names with unclaimed bodies.

The bodies had spread out over 15 miles of beach over several days. At the time 
of the tragedy, the Broward Medical Examiner's Office said it would do 
everything possible to identify those who died on the freighter, whose name 
meant hope in Creole.

Edwina Johnson, now chief investigator, said she still remembers grief-stricken 
Haitians filing into her office, clutching photos of loved ones in their hands. 
''We haven't handled so many deaths at once again,'' the 21-year office veteran 
said.

The medical examiner had to set up a refrigerated trailer in the rear of its 
building.

In the end, investigators had little information on the nameless dozen 
unclaimed.

Most victims had washed ashore nude, caked in sand. They had no fingerprints on 
file in the United States. Most of the nine men and three women appeared to be 
between 21 and 35; three males were as young as 11.

All the victims had meager personal effects. Among the clues: One Haitian woman 
wore ''two yellow metal band rings,'' and two of the men carried keys in their 
pockets. Most washed ashore on Highland Beach and farther south.

What little information investigators finally culled from the victims is 
featured on the website.

Michael Britt, a supervisor of investigations for the Collier County Medical 
Examiner's Office, who maintains the website, holds little hope the Haitians 
will be identified.

''From my past experience, when you're dealing with individuals who do not have 
any family in this country, and the people searching for them live in a region 
like Haiti, where they would not know how to navigate our legal system, it is 
very difficult to put a name to them,'' he said.

All the unidentified Haitians eventually received donated funerals and were 
buried at Our Lady Queen of Heaven Cemetery in North Lauderdale, said Teresa 
Martinez, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Miami.

A bronze marker notes how they died and their anonymity. It partly reads in 
English and Creole: ``In loving memory of those who lost their lives in search 
of freedom in April 1982 and whose names are known to God alone.''

Father Thomas Wenski, a longtime champion of Miami-Dade's Haitian community, 
recalls thinking that the unidentified victims serve as a reminder for all of 
us.

''These Haitians were a modern-day incarnation of Lazarus dying at the doorstep 
of the richest nation in the world,'' said Wenski, now bishop of the diocese of 
Orlando.

He recalled the tragedy of the Esperancia came five months after another 
Haitian freighter, the Nativite, sank in the waters off Hillsboro Beach in 
Broward County. The bodies of 33 Haitians washed ashore on Hillsboro Beach.

A day after the Esperancia sank, Dave McDaniel, 67, now a retired school 
principal from Ohio, was walking on a Boca Raton beach with his son, Scott, 
then 11.

They saw a line of bodies bobbing in the surf. They had heard about the 
freighter breaking up and the bodies coming to shore in South Florida, but 
until that day most had been found in Broward. ''We knew right away who they 
were,'' he said of the bodies.

''I got one man by the leg and dragged him out of the water, but he was dead,'' 
McDaniel said. ``It was strange to see bodies floating like that, with no 
spirit. It was like the bodies in New Orleans you saw on television floating 
by.''