On a sweltering June morning at the New Hampshire State Veterans Cemetery in Boscawen, a crowd of about 100 people gathered around a single grave. Almost none of them had ever met the man being buried. They knew his name, John W. Mulligan, and they knew he had worn the uniform of the United States Navy. For most of those present, that was all the reason they needed to be there. As reported by New Hampshire Public Radio in partnership with the Concord Monitor and the Granite State News Collaborative, the strangers had come for one purpose: to ensure that a veteran with no known family would not be laid to rest alone.
Mulligan was 82 years old, a former Navy fireman who served from 1964 to 1966 during the Vietnam era. Beyond the dates of his birth and death and the fact of his honorable service, those who attended his burial knew almost nothing about the arc of his life. He left behind no known next of kin, the kind of quiet absence that, in another era, might have meant a near empty graveside. Instead, on this morning, the rows of folding chairs filled and the standing crowd spilled outward in the heat, a testament to a community that decided his service alone made him worth honoring.
A Drive of More Than an Hour, and a Bouquet Gathered Along the Way
Among those who came was Tammy Jo Cormier, who drove more than an hour from Sanbornville to attend. Cormier’s father had served in the Navy, and the news of an unaccompanied burial struck a chord she could not ignore. “I just thought, why not do something besides think about myself for a little while,” she said.
Her tribute took shape along the route. As she made her way toward Boscawen, Cormier pulled over to ask strangers whether she could pick flowers from their yards, gathering an assortment that included oversized irises that had caught her eye. She arrived with a handmade bouquet, presented it at the grave, and then took her place among the roughly 100 others standing in the summer heat. The flowers she laid had quite literally been grown in the gardens of people who would never know the man they were honoring, a small chain of generosity stretching from roadside yards to a veteran’s final resting place.
For Jill Hopkins, the sparse details of Mulligan’s life were beside the point. “He was a veteran, that’s all I need to know,” she said. “He served our country so that we can do what we do today.” Hopkins is not a veteran herself, but her family carries deep military ties. Her father served, and pinned over her heart she wore a photograph of her nephew, a veteran who died by suicide at 31 after struggling with post traumatic stress disorder. She carries him with her everywhere in some form, even as a small toy soldier tucked into her pocket. Watching the crowd assemble for a man none of them knew, she offered a simple verdict. “It’s very sad he has no family, but he’s got family now.”
How a Cemetery Program Turns Strangers Into Mourners
The gathering did not happen by accident. The New Hampshire State Veterans Cemetery runs a program called Standing with Fallen Comrades, which allows community members to sign up to be notified whenever an unaccompanied burial is scheduled. The response has been striking. According to Shawn Buck, the cemetery’s director, almost 1,000 people have opted in to receive those notifications.
Buck was candid about the limits of what the cemetery itself knew about the man it was burying. “I don’t know Mr. Mulligan’s story at all, other than he served in the Navy and he was honorably discharged, making him eligible for burial here,” he said. “We were told no known next of kin.” That eligibility, earned through honorable service, is the entire threshold. The program exists precisely so that the absence of a family does not translate into the absence of mourners.
Social media has become an unexpected force multiplier for the effort. Buck described how a single post from a program subscriber can spread an open call far beyond the original list, carrying word of a veteran’s interment across the state and beyond. “Sometimes social media drives me insane, but in cases like this, it’s awesome,” he told the crowd. “It brings great folks like you out here.” What might once have depended on word of mouth among a small circle of veterans now reaches thousands within hours, and the result is the kind of turnout that filled the Boscawen cemetery for Mulligan.
Taps, a Flag Fold, and a Promise to Find His Family
The ceremony carried the full weight of military honors. Retired Master Sergeant Lee Hirtle played taps as dozens of veterans in the crowd came to attention and saluted. Two Honor Guard members performed the Navy flag fold, the precise triangular folding of the American flag that closes a service member’s final rites, and then presented that flag to Valerie Ellmer, a Navy veteran who accepted it in place of Mulligan’s next of kin.
“No one should be buried alone,” Ellmer said. “Especially a veteran,” Hopkins added. Ellmer described herself as honored to receive the flag, but she does not intend to keep it indefinitely. She hopes to track down Mulligan’s relatives so that she can pass it on to the people who share his name and his blood. Ellmer has experience in genealogy research and plans to put those skills to work. “If there’s somebody out there that cares about him, I’d love to share this with them,” she said, the folded flag in her arms. “In the meantime, I will safe keep it.”
That quiet resolve captures something larger about the day. The crowd that gathered for Mulligan did not simply mark an ending. They created a new circle of people committed to his memory, and at least one of them left determined to reconnect his story to whatever family may still exist. A man who arrived at the cemetery with no known relatives departed it, in a sense, with a hundred temporary ones and a Navy veteran working to find his real ones.
A Tradition of Honoring Service Across New Hampshire
The Boscawen gathering fits within a broader pattern of how New Hampshire chooses to recognize military service and sacrifice. The state has repeatedly translated that respect into law and ceremony, from the recent decision to create a Gold Star license plate honoring the fathers and families of fallen service members to the civic energy on display as communities prepare patriotic commemorations. That same spirit animates events like the work chronicled at Concord’s Flag-Works Over America as the state gears up for the nation’s 250th anniversary, where the flag itself becomes a focal point of shared identity.
What unites these efforts is a conviction that service should not be forgotten, whether the veteran in question leaves behind a large family or none at all. Mulligan’s burial put that conviction to its hardest test, asking strangers to show up for a man whose story they could not tell. They answered without hesitation. In doing so, the people who filled the New Hampshire State Veterans Cemetery on a hot June morning offered a reminder that in the Granite State, a uniform earned generations ago is still enough to summon a crowd, a salute, and a folded flag held in safekeeping until family can be found.
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