‘Next of friend’
After lonely death, veteran got a hero’s goodbye
Andrew Moore lived alone and died alone. He was raised in an orphanage and never married. For his last 40 years, the World War II veteran slept on a couch in an efficiency apartment in the nation’s capital.
The 89-year-old pensioner died in December with no will, no instructions and no next of kin. He lay in a cold room at the District of Columbia medical examiner’s office, where the unclaimed dead are usually destined for a pauper’s grave.
Instead, on Friday, Moore was given a hero’s sendoff at Arlington National Cemetery. A uniformed honor guard escorted Moore’s flag-covered remains. A bugler played taps and three volleys of rifle fire marked his passing.
How a lonely man escaped the oblivion of a potter’s field was the work of a family Moore may not have known he had: the residents of State House, an apartment building at the edge of Washington’s Embassy Row.
His neighbors didn’t know much about the affable old-timer who smoked on the front steps. But they knew he deserved a dignified goodbye.
Most residents of the 308-unit State House probably never heard Andy Moore’s name. He was just one of the building’s fixtures, the friendly Redskins fanatic in Apartment 307. He would bring staffers Hershey’s Kisses from CVS.
Bill Sheppard and Nick Addams spearheaded the effort to make Moore’s funeral something more than minimal.
Addams, a spry 81-year-old retired lawyer and nightclub owner, and Sheppard pieced together bits of his history: A stint in the Navy, a few years in the Coast Guard. He had worked at a federal warehouse and then for an insurance company. “We knew a little, but there were big gaps,” said Sheppard, 65, retired from a career with an airport vendor.
Moore and Sheppard had struck up a smokers’ friendship outside the front door. “It was impossible not to like him,” Sheppard said.
After a fall in 2014, Moore went to a rehab hospital. Officials there wanted to move him to a nursing home, but Moore insisted on returning to the State House.
Moore came back with a walker. He never walked unaided again, but he did live another eight months on his own.
When an ambulance pulled up in December, Sheppard immediately thought of Moore. Sure enough, a desk clerk told him Moore had been taken to a hospital, where he died of heart failure.
Sheppard and Addams lamented the loss of their neighbor. “I thought we should do something,” Addams said.
Sheppard drafted an appeal for funds from neighbors. After a 30-day waiting period, anyone willing to shoulder the expense of burial of an unclaimed or indigent deceased can arrange to have the body sent to a funeral home.
“We call it releasing to the ‘next of friend,’ ” said Jennifer Love, a forensic anthropologist at the agency.
Meanwhile, Sheppard’s solicitations were paying off. In all, State House residents gave about $2,000. The pair spent about $1,500 on the cremation, a cremation certificate and the death certificate.
On Friday, with a cool wind whipping across Arlington’s hills, the Stars and Stripes draped the box containing Moore’s ashes. A Coast Guard honor guard folded the flag and handed it to Sheppard. Addams was given the 21 shells fired in Moore’s honor.
And as his neighbors — his family — looked on, a man who spent his life alone took his place for eternity amid a host of heroes.