{"id":9641,"date":"2015-11-19T09:43:03","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T15:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=9641"},"modified":"2015-11-19T09:43:03","modified_gmt":"2015-11-19T15:43:03","slug":"1000-strangers-attend-funeral-of-marine-vet-with-no-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2015\/11\/19\/1000-strangers-attend-funeral-of-marine-vet-with-no-family\/","title":{"rendered":"1,000 Strangers attend Funeral of Marine Vet with No Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Funeral\"<\/p>\n

Marine veteran Billy Aldridge had no next of kin when he died, but that didn\u2019t stop his community from coming to pay their respects.<\/h2>\n
\n
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On Nov. 17, a Marine veteran received a solemn and dignified funeral as 1,000 strangers made their way past his casket, one by one, to pay their respects. Just one month earlier, when Billy Aldridge passed away at 80 years old, there was no one to come and claim his body or set his affairs in order. His funeral seemed likely to be a lonely affair. Instead, community members, veterans, and service members from every branch came forward to give him a dignified send off.<\/p>\n

After Aldridge\u2019s death on Oct. 14, neither the Indianapolis, Indiana, nursing home where he had lived nor the funeral home tasked with seeing to his affairs were able to reach any next of kin.<\/p>\n

Over the next two weeks, Carrie Gee, the funeral director at Legacy Cremation and Funeral Services, scoured Aldridge\u2019s records searching for a contact, she told Task & Purpose in an interview. Gee finally got a break after speaking with his old landlord, who said he remembered seeing a photo of Aldridge in a military uniform \u201cwith some medals\u201d in his old apartment.<\/p>\n

Read the Remainder at Task and Purpose<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marine veteran Billy Aldridge had no next of kin when he died, but that didn\u2019t stop his community from coming to pay their respects. On Nov. 17, a Marine veteran received a solemn and dignified funeral as 1,000 strangers made their way past his casket, one by one, to pay their respects. Just one month…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[74,1247,2820,1860,1911],"tags":[3051,1050,3052,3053,3054],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9641"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}