Losing the formatting of the footer & not loading the initial data (DataTables)

Catalyst

As it says in the question, it doesn't load any data during the initial 'draw()' of the DataTable even though the JSON returned is valid. So even after that, and reaching the 'success' function, I am looping through the returned JSON and creating a string myself as to 'create' the table rows. (That's was the only success, I have had with the data so far, but not how I want to handle the data if I dont need to). Would rather let the default behavior of the DT do as much of the work for me as possible. I still have the child rows yet that I want to add.

I dont know if that initial data load is what is messing up the DataTable as a whole, or if it something else, but I loose the formatting of the footer. It should look and function just like the header.

Also, one last thing, when I DO click on the sort in the headers, it doesnt refresh the DataTable, it just adds more rows (of the correct data) but not sorted, just those same rows I am creating in the success added to the DataTable.

Here is my code if anyone can give me some direction. Thanks.

I tried putting all the code here and it was unreadable, so I put it in Fiddle (and made a couple small modifications to make it work locally there) as to make it easier to read, here is the link:

https://jsfiddle.net/Catalyst75/df8e35ne/