You don't know who Ray Vivier is — or was, but here is a story of the best of us.
This 61-year-old ex-Marine was a homeless vet, passed by and ignored by hundreds as he lived in a shanty beneath a Cleveland bridge. He had struggled with alcoholism, but by November he had a welding job, friends and a place to stay at a boarding house. He was just getting his life together again.
He rescued five people from that house when arsonists set it on fire, but died in the heroic act. He and three others died, and two people have been charged in their deaths. Vivier's body, unclaimed and unidentified for weeks, seemed destined for an anonymous, modest burial.
However, Jody Fesco had met Vivier while she was volunteering at a soup kitchen and connacted a friend at AP to make sure Vivier wasn't forgotten. Sse found his family and arranged a proper funeral.
On Friday, Vivier's ashes were inurned at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
"You can see from what he did that he definitely had a good heart," said Mercedes Cruz, Vivier's ex-wife of 23 years, who attended the funeral with the couple's children. "No matter what our difficulties were in our marriage, I'm very proud of what's happened."
His grown children are trying to put together the pieces of their father whom they had not seen in 15 years. They know of his heroism now, but nothing of his struggles and turnaround.
"What I'm trying to get out of this is to have one good, concrete memory that I can have of him for what he did to save those people," said his oldest daughter, Elisha Vivier. "I'm proud of the man that he was becoming."







And if pigs had wings they could fly.
Weekly Standard, The Idealogue