People love stories about paying back veterans, so how about a rather somber and wholesome one to add to the list?

They give up everything for their country, and they can never be repaid as much as they deserve. Still, it doesn’t hurt to try.

Thomas Hunter of Louisiana served in Vietnam and lived to the age of 93 before passing away.

He served from 1942 till 1949. That’s 7 years of serving his country before he returned home.

Perhaps most impressively, he participated in the Normandy invasion as well. Normandy was a tide-turning and significant moment in history and he was part of it.

When he got home, he spent the rest of his days as a bachelor.

Thomas had a big family in the form his 11 siblings.

But Hunter outlived all of them. That posed a problem when he passed away and arrangements for his funeral began.

When he passed, he had no surviving male relatives to serve as pallbearers – be it children, cousins, or siblings.

Such a hero of the country deserved a proper send-off, and the folks in Louisiana were going to make sure of that.

Bryan Price, who’s the director of Southern Funeral Homes in Winnfield, had an idea.

He made a call to Lyn Bankston, the football coach of Winnifield High.

Price asked for people to volunteer as pallbearers, and specifically wanted the members of the local high school football team for it.

One call later and they got their volunteers: Matthew Harrell, Christian Evans, Brett Jurek, Lee Estay, T.J. Homan, and Justin Lawson.

These six teenagers have never met Thomas Hunter.

They’ve never known his family and they have no memories together. Yet they still owe a lot to the man since he helped fight for the freedom they enjoy today.

Freedom sometimes has to be earned, and people like Hunter earned it for his country and all the generations who’d call it home.

The six of them even wondered if it’d be appropriate at all to be wearing their football uniforms for the procession.

To this, their coach told them “You and this program stand for exactly what Mr. Hunter stood for when he was serving this country.”

And so that’s how 6 boys came to become pallbearers for a man they never knew. Yet despite never knowing each other, the moment couldn’t be any less meaningful.

After all his years of service, a day of service in return from some everyday people is the least they could do.

We may never be able to properly give back to the brave men and women who serve the country and fight for our freedom, but we can sure as hell try.

I’m sure Thomas Hunter would have been immensely proud of these 6 boys and the gesture they did for him. It certainly made a lot of folks on the internet smile from behind a screen.

It’s one of those stories that you wish you’d see more often in a world where all the news seems negative.

Watch the video about it below, and share this article too!

Please SHARE this with your friends and family.

Source: USA Today on YouTube, K945.com, Southern Funeral Homes on Facebook