Stoltz moved back to Curlew, she said, remarried, then divorced. He never had any children.

While in Curlew, Stoltz looked after his mother until her death. He spent some time in a nursing home after that, Bohn said, then returned to Bennington. He moved around and was in and out of nursing homes before he died.

After reading his funeral notice in the paper, Shields talked with former classmates and encouraged them to attend the funeral.

“It’s too bad it didn’t happen sooner when he was living that people reached out to him,” she said. “It sounds like he could have used a friend.”

But on Tuesday, Stoltz made hundreds of new friends.

“There’s an old saying that nobody loves a veteran like another veteran,” cemetery representative Mark Macko said to the crowd. “That was certainly shown today.”

Dennis Schissel, president of the local chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America, said funerals for Vietnam veterans typically draw between 150 and 200 people, with crowds mostly made up of veterans.

“We come together for something like this,” he said. “He was one of us at this time.”