On Oct. 1, thousands of people drove for hours to attend the funeral of Army veteran Edward K. Pearson, whom they had never met. Pearson, a Naples, Florida resident, died at age 80 on Aug. 31 in a local hospice facility.
The facility reached out to Legacy Options Funeral and Cremation Services, hoping they could contact Pearson’s family members, but Legacy family services counselor Jeffrey Nieves told PEOPLE they were unable to find anyone. “We had had him in our care for a month and had made every due diligence call to contact family and nobody came forward,” he said.
Pearson’s obituary was then published in the Naples Daily News, noting that all were welcome to attend his funeral at Sarasota National Cemetery, as he had no immediate family. Few people were expected to attend — until the obituary went viral, and hundreds began calling Legacy saying they’d be there.
According to CNN, over 1,000 people came to show their respects for the veteran, who served in the Army from February 1962 to 1964, when he was honorably discharged, and was laid to rest with full military honors.
