Man Holding Yard Sales to Finance His Own Funeral

Veteran Willie Davis has stage 4 cancer, wants to be buried near his parents

By Newser Editors and Wire Services

Posted Sep 27, 2018 11:30 AM CDT

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Man Holding Yard Sales to Finance His Own Funeral — Willie Davis, a US Navy veteran who is dying from cancer, sits in his garage among many of his belongings, which he's trying to sell to help pay for his own funeral in Pennsylvania. (John Rucosky/Tribune-Democrat via AP)

A Pennsylvania man has been holding yard sales to pay for funeral expenses. The catch, as per the AP: It's his own. Some of his customers are going a step further to help. David Dunkleberger says he and his friend Ed Sheets pulled into a yard sale in Brownstown last month. He says the man running it, Willie Davis, told him he was selling his belongings to pay for a funeral. When asked whose funeral, the 66-year-old Davis replied: "Mine."

Davis, who served in the Navy in the 1970s, has been diagnosed with stage 4 squamous cell carcinoma. He hopes to be buried next to his parents in Culpeper, Va. Sheets tells WJAC it "broke your heart" hearing Davis' story, so the two set up a GoFundMe page to help offset funeral costs; as of this writing, more than $21,000 has been raised. "He's done a lot serving our country, so we wanted to kind of return the favor to him so that, again, his last days could be a little less hectic, a little more peaceful for him," Sheets says.

(More GoFundMe stories.)

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