Obama meets with families

June 11, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama on Thursday consoled relatives of the 11 workers killed in the Gulf oil spill disaster, acknowledging their “unimaginable grief” and personally assuring the families that he will stand with them.

One man who lost a son asked Obama to support efforts to update federal law limiting the amount of money the families can collect.

“He told us we weren’t going to be forgotten,” said Keith Jones of Baton Rouge, La. “He just wanted us to know this wasn’t going to leave his mind and his heart.”

Jones’ 28-year-old son, Gordon, was working on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig leased by BP PLC when it exploded April 20 and then sank in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history and creating one of Obama’s biggest challenges as president.

The younger Jones, a mud engineer, left behind a wife, Michelle, and two sons, a 2-year-old and one born just a month ago. Obama held the baby, Maxwell Gordon.

The meeting with the families came on Day 51 of the disaster. Obama also updated congressional leaders from both parties on the response to the spill, and the top federal official overseeing the crisis invited BP executives to meet next week with Obama, their first meeting with the president since the rig exploded and sank.

Keith Jones said he and another son, Chris, asked Obama to support changing the Death on the High Seas Act, a 90-year-old law that limits liability for wrongful deaths more than three miles offshore.

Obama promised to look into the matter, Keith Jones said.