He had no living family.
He was not famous.
He lived alone.
Yet on Tuesday, hundreds of people gathered at the graveside of World War II veteran Stephen Kolesnik Jr. and watched him laid to rest.
"When you're a veteran you've got family," a funeral speaker is captured on video saying during the service at New Hampshire State Veterans Cemetery in Boscawen, a town 10 miles northwest of Concord, the state's capital. "He was afraid he would died alone... and look what has happened."
The U.S. Navy veteran died Dec. 1 in hospice care at age 97, according to his obituary, and Lebanon, New Hampshire resident Kevin Dougherty, one of more than 200 attendees at the funeral.
Kolesnik had no living relatives, Dougherty told USA TODAY Thursday, and previously told his hospice nurse, Becky Lynn, he was afraid he'd die forgotten.
"He had told her he feared no one would attend his funeral," Dougherty said. "She’s the person who got the ball rolling."
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