According to Debbie Burt Myers, m anaging editor of the Neshoba Democrat, in an online report, Aaron's parents worked on dairy farms while he was growing up. His cousin, Darryl Bryan, remembered spending the night in the Burkeen home and Dale, 10 years old at the time, getting up at 4 a.m. to help with the milking. "He worked hard all his life," Bryan said. "I don't know a better man than him." Aaron attended Neshoba Central High School, though he opted to get a GED (General Educational Development) certificate instead of graduating. He later earned a degree in welding at East Central Community College. Aaron had previously worked at U. S. Electrical Motors and Pearl River Resort, where he made many friends.
"Dale was just a good ole country boy and the thing that always came first to him was family," said friend Kenneth Billings. "The one thing he always wanted to have was a family: a wife, children and a good job. He never wanted material things. That wasn't his goals. His were a lot simpler than that. He wanted a happy family and to be able to provide for his kids. He didn't care about the frills and all the finer things in life. That wasn't what was important to him."
Claudie Embry, Aaron's first cousin: recalled April 4, 2010, Easter Sunday, watching Burkeen hunt eggs with his son, whom he called Bo. "Dale didn't want to hide the eggs, he wanted to hunt them with Bo," Embry said. "He wanted to help Bo find the prize egg. He was a kid at heart and his boy was his world." Aaron also thought the world of his daughter, Aryn, a third-grade teacher, who lived in Alaska with her mother, Karen Knight, and was scheduled to come to Philadelphia in May 2010 to spend time with her father, who was going to teach her how to drive a car.
"He often joked that if anything every happened he didn't want us to give up on him because he could survive in such places as a desert or rain forest," his sister, Woodson reflected last year. "After the explosion, we just couldn't help but hope that maybe he was able to swim to an island or someplace, but, I guess it just wasn't meant to be. He was planning to get a horse and a swimming pool this summer, not just for his kids to enjoy, but also his nieces and nephews. He felt like they were all his kids."
Aaron's body was not recovered.
Donald Clark , 49, of Newellton, Louisiana, was assistant driller. He and his wife, Sheila, were raising four children. F amily members sometimes called him "Duck." It is believed that Donald died on the rig floor along with Jason Anderson, Stephen Ray Curtis and Dewey Revette. Donald was expected to leave the rig the day after the explosion for a three-week break. He was an assistant driller.
Donald's body was not recovered.
Stephen Curtis, 40, of Louisiana, was married and raising two teenagers. He taught his son to hunt and play baseball, and he was active in his church. He was expecting to leave the rig the day after the explosion for a three-week break.
Stephen's body was not recovered.
Roy Wyatt Kemp , 27, of Jonesville, Louisiana, was an assistant driller. He and his wife, Courtney, were raising two daughters: Kaylee, 3, and 3-month-old Maddison. He loved fishing and the outdoors, and attended a Baptist church in Jonesville.
Roy's body was not recovered.
Karl Kleppinger , 38, of Natchez, Mississippi, was a Gulf War veteran. Karl had spent more than ten years working on oilrigs. He was a floorman who made about $75,000 a year working off the Louisiana coast. He left behind his wife, Tracy, and a 17-year-old son.
Karl's body was not recovered.
Gordon Jones , 29, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was an engineer, married with one son and another baby on the way. He had spoken by telephone with his pregnant wife, Michelle, only 10 minutes before the oilrig exploded, and died just three days before their sixth wedding anniversary. "He was the glue that bound the family together," Michelle said. The day her husband left to work a two-week shift, she said she gave him lots of extra hugs and kisses. He got up early and she followed him around the house and to the garage, hugging him. She thought she was just being emotional because of her pregnancy. "I watched him drive away, from the window," she said last year. She thinks it was God's way of allowing her to say goodbye.
According to Laura Parker, in an online December 12, 2010 AOL news article, Gordon's father, Keith, 59, "has emerged as a leading figure in a campaign to even the score for the families of the lost men." He is a personal injury lawyer by profession, although he has no experience in maritime law. Jones has watched the hearings of the multiple investigations into the disaster and read thousands of pages of engineering reports. "I don't know what parent wouldn't want to know what happened," he said, knowing full well that he has learned things he really doesn't want to know.
Gordon's body was not recovered.
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