It took Mattie Roberts a few minutes to guide her walker to the front of the room and settle in beside Frank V. Griffin, the funeral director at the Historic Dent's Undertaking Establishment.

She asked Mr. Griffin to repay the $1,760.52 she had given to him as prepayment for her funeral expenses.

"When you are old, you can go at anytime," Ms. Roberts said.

She needed the money back to make other funeral arrangements, she said.

Mr. Griffin filed for personal bankruptcy Aug. 20, listing the debts and assets of Dent's funeral home as his own.

A creditors' meeting was held Wednesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Nowhere in his petition are the prepaid funeral agreements listed. Bankruptcy Trustee A. Stephenson Wallace and several angry senior citizens wanted to know what happened to the money that was supposed to be set aside in special accounts for prepaid funerals.

Mr. Griffin said he didn't have the money. When the checks come in, he will give some of the money to former owners Thomasina Ketch and Juliette Burton and use the rest to pay the funeral home's bills, he said.

"If I had the money I'd be down in the Cayman Islands ... not going through this," Mr. Griffin said.

"How am I going to get buried?" Lucille Patterson asked.

Mr. Griffin told her and several others that if they had prepaid for funerals he had a friend who would honor their contracts. He said he could not name the person in the public hearing.

"That's not good enough for me," said Ms. Patterson, who will be 92 in August.

"I want concrete evidence. Where is my $7,047?" she demanded.

Mr. Griffin said he didn't know how many prepaid customers Dent's had. After the Georgia Department of Revenue shut it down, all of the paperwork disappeared, he said.

The Department of Revenue closed the funeral home in July because it owed $142,334 in sales taxes.

Dent's Undertaking Establishment is the city's oldest black-owned funeral home. It was founded by John and Julia Dent in 1888, family members have told The Augusta Chronicle.

Their son-in-law Thomas H. Ketch Sr. took over the business and passed it down to his daughters, Ms. Ketch and Ms. Burton, in 1985.

Mr. Griffin said Ms. Ketch and Ms. Burton each signed over one-third interest in the D'Antignac Street funeral home about eight years ago.

He said Patricia Jefferson owns the remaining one-third of the business.

Mr. Griffin's bankruptcy petition lists assets of $539,081 and debts of $441,156.

Although he filed for Chapter 11, a reorganization of debts, it was converted to Chapter 7, a liquidation bankruptcy.