Kenyon Worldwide Disaster Management
Kenyon Worldwide Disaster Management is a Houston-based worldwide disaster management company. Kenyon has a long history of responding to incidents of mass fatalities dating back to 1929. [1]
They have responded to numerous aviation accidents around the world including providing morgue support services in Pennsylvania after the crash of Flight 93 on 9-11. They are also currently supporting recovery efforts in Australia and Thailand from December 2004's tsunami.
Kenyon was contracted by the Department of Homeland Security to provide morgue support services for FEMA. When talks between FEMA and Kenyon broke down regarding mobile morgues in Baton Rogue, Governor Kathleen Blanco signed the contract with them, and they are currently under contract from the State of Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals for those services. [2]
Kenyon is wholly owned by another Houston-based company, Service Corporation International, which is headed by long time Bush friend Robert L. Waltrip. SCI has made generous donations to Bush's gubernatorial campaigns [3] and put up 100K for the construction of George H. W. Bush's presidential library. [4]
SCI is North America's largest funeral home and cemetary company, owning over 3,700• mortuaries nationwide, including the Menorah Gardens cemetary chain. Menorah Gardens was sued, and SCI eventually paid $100 million [5], for desecrating vaults, removing and dumping bodies, recycling graves and other ghoulish actions to make room for more bodies in two Florida cemetaries. [6]
Parts of this scandal reached into Texas at the time Bush was governor. According to Eliza May, the former staff director of the Texas Funeral Service Commission, she was fired for resisting pressure from Bush's office to end her investigation into Waltrip's company. May subpoenaed Bush in 1999 in regards to her lawsuit against the commission, Waltrip and SCI. Under the arm of then Bush's Chief of Staff and future FEMA director, Joe Allbaugh, then State Attorney General John Cornyn, and the ruling judge, John K. Dietz, the subpoena was quashed. [7]
• Washington Post reports 3,700, Raw Story reports 1,500
