More than 150,000 homeless veterans in the U.S., many whose remains are unclaimed at their death, risk burial in paupers’ graves, according to the Dignity Memorial Homeless Veterans Burial Program.

Through the Burial Program, one Georgia veteran won’t be among them.

Wendell Doughty (1962-2012) of College Park served in the U.S. Army as a medical specialist for three years. Doughty will receive services conducted with military honors at Georgia National Cemetery in Canton.

Doughty, 50, is a veteran with no home, no money and no legal next-of-kin to make his funeral arrangements. That’s when H.M Patterson & Son-Canton Hill Chapel, of Marietta, stepped in to see to it that Doughty receives a burial befitting a veteran of our nation’s armed services.