Homeless Vet, Forgotten in Life, Remembered in Death

by Josie Raymond · 2010-01-25 15:41:00 UTC
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One day, Ray Vivier was a 61-year-old homeless veteran winning the war against alcoholism who had recently moved from a shanty under a bridge to a boarding house in Cleveland. The next, after an arsonist set fire to the boarding house and Vivier saved five people before dying from burn wounds, he was a hero. That was last November. For weeks, Vivier's remains went unidentified and unclaimed. His five grown children and his ex-wife didn't know where to look for him. But a woman who had befriended him at a soup kitchen started tracking him down. After the connections were made, Ray Vivier's family was there on Friday for his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, where he was given full military honors, including a seven-gun salute and a bugler playing Taps.

Earlier this month, police arrested a man they believe set the fire. He has been charged with aggravated murder for the killing of Vivier and three others who died in the boarding house. No motive was given.

Vivier's funeral, and the pride his estranged children now feel, make for a beautiful ending to a very sad story. It rankles, however, to think that Vivier, who never saw combat in his two years in the Marines, was so well cared for in death, but not in life. It's also a reminder that Vivier is just one of an estimated 131,000 homeless veterans, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Don't they deserve more than a seven-gun salute?

Photo credit: Kevin Wolf/AP via The Washington Post

Josie Raymond is a Change.org editor who has reported from the streets of the South Bronx, written for several magazines that folded (not her fault) and fixed thousands of typos.
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