BUSHNELL, Fla. (AP) - Veterans groups and volunteer escorts on motorcycles ensured that two Florida men received military burials even without family or close friends to claim their bodies.
Army veteran Edward Walker Jr. and Navy veteran Joseph Palella died recently in Gainesville. The Gainesville Sun reports (http://bit.ly/294yA7d ) that aside from their names and dates of military service, no other information about the men was available.
Jon Thomas of Forest Meadows Funeral Home says each would have had a pauper's burial without the volunteers who arranged for military burials Tuesday at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell.
Forest Meadows staff drove the caskets to the cemetery. The Sun reports that veterans saluted the caskets as they were loaded into the hearses, and the vehicles were escorted to Bushnell by motorcyclists from various groups.
