SALISBURY, N.C. — In a small church in the rolling hills of central North Carolina, a congregation grieved Saturday for the Liberian man who became the first person to die of Ebola in the United States.
Many know Thomas Eric Duncan for carrying the virus to U.S. soil, infecting at least two people and prompting widespread unease.
But members of the Rowan International Church, a southern Baptist congregation of mostly Liberian immigrants, remember the 42-year-old as a compassionate man with big dreams for his future.
For them, Duncan’s death marks another milestone in months of sadness as they’ve watched the gruesome disease overtake several thousand people in their country. The outbreak has crippled Liberia’s health care system, increasing the deadliness of other maladies.
“It’s been very difficult not only because of Eric’s death, but many of the people here have other relatives, friends and family members who have also been dying in Liberia,” pastor Samar Ghandour said before Saturday’s memorial service at the church.
Mourners arrived in small groups, several dozen of them eventually filling the church to about half-capacity.
Duncan’s family members in attendance included his mother and his nephew, Josephus Weeks.
They were among the last to talk to Duncan by speakerphone as he lay in Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas several days before his death.
Duncan said he was tired, Weeks recalled. “So his mom said, ‘Well, let me let you go back to sleep so you can rest. We’ll call you back in the afternoon.’”
But after that, Duncan was too weak to speak again before his death Oct. 8.
“He did not have the time to say bye to his mother, or his sister and other close relatives because of the circumstance in which he found himself,” the church’s secretary, Varney Holmes, said as Duncan’s mother bent forward, sobbing.
Weeks remembered growing up with Duncan in West Africa. Although Duncan is Weeks’ uncle, they were nearly the same age and were raised in the same household.
Weeks recalled playing games as boys with a tennis ball.
“We called him Tennis Ball Master,” Weeks said. “Eric would beat everybody. Nobody could catch up to him.”
Later, when Duncan had a motorcycle, Weeks rode behind him. “He scared me a lot of times because he rode so fast,” Weeks said.
As civil war tore apart Liberia, the family fled to the Ivory Coast. There, Duncan attended a high school founded by Arthur Kulah, a retired bishop over the United Methodist Church in Liberia.
Kulah, who lives in Liberia, attended Saturday’s service. He said Duncan ran a telephone booth where refugees called relatives in the United States and Europe to seek help.
“Some would come there without a cent in their pocket,” Kulah said. “He would say, ‘Go ahead and call, and when your money comes, you can pay me.’”
While many of Duncan’s relatives fled to the United States, he remained in Africa. In 1996 he moved to Ghana, where he attended school to learn mechanics and welding, family members said. He returned to Monrovia, Liberia, in 2012 and found work with FedEx.
By some accounts, he helped carry a pregnant Ebola victim days before he left Liberia for the United States on Sept. 19. Family members say Duncan did not realize the woman had Ebola, because she was the first in that area to become infected.
Duncan hoped to reunite with the mother of his 19-year-old son in Dallas, whom he’d not seen for many years, relatives said.
Harry Korkoya, who said he is Duncan’s half-brother, got a call that Duncan was coming.
“He said, ‘When I come, I’m going to work four or five jobs to earn so much money,’” Korkoya said. “That was the dream that Eric had.”
Instead, “he died helping someone,” Korkoya said, referring to the pregnant woman. “That shows you the kind of man Eric was.”
For Liberians, Duncan’s death is part of an unfolding tragedy for a nation that has been struggling to recover from decades of civil strife.
“Where did Ebola come from, to destroy people who are already on the ground?” asked Kulah, the retired bishop. “Why, my God? Why?”
