Funeral for Homeless Vet

James Beavers Funeral from The Journal Gazette on Vimeo.

I've looked through a bunch of old videos I made during my days working The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Ind., and just ran across this one. Just about every time I look at old work, I wish I would've changed an edit point, added something here, left something out there or even just chose a slightly different camera angle to improve the piece as a whole. I guess that's how you learn. I made this video back in December of 2015. Hundreds of veterans, active military members, and citizens attended the funeral services for James Beavers, a U.S. Army Vietnam veteran who died on November 23, 2015. Beavers had no known family or friends to direct the handling of his remains. The funeral with full military honors was held at D.O. McComb and Sons funeral home on Lake Avenue in Fort Wayne. Numerous visitors continued on to the interment at Riverview Cemetery on Carroll Road to pay their respects to the man for his service to the country. I had to shoot and edit this video on deadline, so I just didn't have as much time a I would've like to really polish it up. I was proud of this vido when I published it, and it won a few awards. Looking at it now, however, I really wish I could do a re-edit, but I am no longer with the newspaper and don't have access to the original files. I'd change a few things up in the shooting of the video as well. I never knew James Beavers. I'd bet almost no one who attended his services knew him either. That's the real unfortunate part of this portion of the story. But it certainly was nice to see a community of people rally for one of their own.