03:50 PM CST on Thursday, March 30, 2006

By CHRIS HEINBAUGH / WFAA-TV

WFAA-TV

Charlotte Ann Blue

Dallas County administrators apologized Wednesday to the family of a woman who has not been given a pauper's cremation because of her weight.

A special program the county has with UT Southwestern Medical School called the indigent disposition program helps indigents or families too poor to pay for a burial. The body is first offered to the medical school or is cremated and the county picks up the tab.

However, that wasn't how it worked for one Sam Hunter's mother.

"I feel like I've been slapped in the face," Hunter said.

For most of her life, Charlotte Ann Blue was an RN at Parkland Hospital with a career of caring.

"Because I'm her son I'm a little biased, but she was a nurse extraordinaire," Hunter said.

On Feb. 6 Blue died after an illness that financially wiped her out. So, Hunter, 58, used the indigent disposition program.

As far as he knew, he said he assumed she had been cremated and her ashes interned at a special Memorial Garden at UT Southwestern. But, then he called to get a death certificate and found out differently.

"That's when I was informed that for the last two months she's been sitting in the deep freeze at the medical examiner's office because the crematorium that does business for the county says, 'Oh well, she's too big [and] too fat."

Under the program, the county pays $300 for cremation of a body of up to 300 pounds. Blue weighed 457 pounds.

The Medical Examiner would not talk on camera but said larger bodies use more resources and the funeral home wanted $157 bucks more, which is dollar a pound.

While the lawyers haggled, Blue has sat in the cooler.

Hunter said since he didn't know, he wonders how many others this might have happened to.

"How many other families don't know what's going on?" he said. "How many other families have someone wrapped up like a piece of sausage in the ME's office because...someone's bickering over money."

After News 8 calls, the county administrator approved the funds and apolgized that Blue's remains got caught up in red tape.

E-mail cheinbaugh@wfaa.com