FEMA offers generous funeral aid to those grieving COVID-19 deaths. Getting it isn’t easy.

Shenora Staten-Jordan felt lost when her father, Gary Lee Staten, died of COVID-19 in May. She hadn’t expected to lose him so soon at age 61 — or for a contagious disease to hinder her goodbye.

All of that only strengthened her Milwaukee family’s wishes to give Staten — a beloved father and grandfather who spent 30-plus years serving Milwaukee Public Schools — the type of homegoing service he deserved, she said.