A deceased 67-year-old veteran was given a funeral fit for a king thanks to a compassionate intern and thousands of American neighbors.
According to his obituary, Wayne Lee Wilson passed away on May 28th without any surviving family members. His funerary service was shaping up to be a small memorial ceremony with just 10 of his close friends.
As his service was being orchestrated by Brown Funeral Home and Cremation Service in Nile, Michigan, one of the mortuary’s interns, Drew Mickel, felt compelled to honor the late Vietnam veteran by inviting additional people to the memorial.
Mickel worked with the funeral home and local newspaper in order to publicize the funeral and ask readers to stop by the service on July 17th—and he was stunned by the amount of people who responded.
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Over 3,000 people from Michigan, Iowa, Tennessee, Indiana, and Florida arrived at the service to pay their respects.
“It turned out that a lot of people showed up, saying that he might not have family but I’ll be his family for the day,” Mickel told ABC News.
“It was unlike any other funeral I’d been to,” he added. “This one was very uplifting and just [had] the message of you’re never alone.”
(WATCH the news coverage below) – Photo by Brown Funeral Home and Cremation Services
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