Tulsa Family Grieves Loss Of American Airlines Employee To COVID-19

The family of a man who died of COVID wants him to remember him for the life he lived, instead of the way he died. Todd Bever was 54, and died last week after two weeks of COVID-19. His family remembers him for making everyone around him laugh. His sister, Michell Haynes, said “ Everybody just loves Todd, you know?”

Bever died at Saint Francis Hospital, where his niece, Krysten Knowles, works as a nurse’s assistant. She was there when he died.

“I got in the room, held his hand, and maybe 30 seconds or a minute, his heart rate changed, and he died,” said Knowles.

Bever worked at American Airlines, which offers incentives for employees to get vaccinated. His family isn't entirely sure why he had not taken the offer.

“He was going to do it, but he got sick,” said Knowles. “You just never think it's going to be you or someone you love who will get sick and die.”

His sister couldn't see him at the hospital, and after he went on a ventilator - couldn't communicate with him at all. “That's the hard part, not being able to say goodbye,” said Haynes. “It's still not real.”

On the day Bever died, the State Health Department reported that 44 other Oklahomans died from COVID-19.