Here’s a sign that some parents are doing a wonderful job of raising their children…..Several teens stepped forward to serve as pallbearers for a veteran with no family.
Navy veteran Jerry Wayne Pino died on Dec. 12th in Long Beach, Mississippi. He was 70 years old.
Pino was born in Baton Rouge and joined the Navy in New Orleans. He was a petty officer third class in Vietnam. He had No family. No friends….. He died alone.
Jerry’s body lay unclaimed in a funeral home for several weeks.
Cathy Warden, who works at the funeral home, and her friend Eva Boomer decided something must be done to give this veteran a proper send off.
Boomer, herself a veteran, wondered if some of the boys at Long Beach High School might be willing to serve as pallbearers. It was a longshot, though, seeing how most of the students were out on Christmas break.
But they reached out anyway and within a matter of minutes, six young men volunteered to serve at a stranger’s funeral.
17-year-old Bailey Griffin, one of the pallbearers, said “It was the right thing to do,”. “He served our country. He fought for our rights. For him to be buried with nobody there was just sad. I told myself I was going to do it and I did it.”
The boys solemnly took their places on either side of the flag-draped coffin and escorted a man they did not know to his final resting place.
Warden said, “I went out there for the service and cried the whole way through,”“He had no one there. This veteran had nobody standing there but these boys.”