Saint Joseph the Worker Church in Hanson, Massachusetts, drew a crowd of hundreds who came to pay their respects to a World War II U.S. Navy veteran who left behind no known relatives, according to CBS News.
John Bernard Arnold III, a 98-year-old East Bridgewater resident, died on May 6. According to CBS News, Arnold outlived both of his sisters and lost his mother at age six and his father sometime in his twenties; he had no spouse or children.
Terrence O'Keeffe, the veterans' service officer for Hanson and Hanover, posted a request on Facebook $META +0.38% asking the public to serve as attendees, pallbearers, and procession participants, CBS News reported. The post was shared hundreds of times.
The turnout drew a wide cross-section of the community, including police officers, firefighters, EMTs, state officials, fellow veterans, and residents from throughout the region. Arnold, according to CBS News, had made his own funeral arrangements more than a decade earlier, specifying that the service include only brief remarks and forgo a eulogy.
Dr. Andrea Gayle-Bennett, the deputy secretary for the Executive Office of Veteran Services, said the level of public response exceeded expectations. "When the veterans service officer from Hanson put out the call that he had outlived everyone, he didn't even imagine this level of support," she told CBS News.
