In January of 2016 NPR reported on a man named Mike Pojman, the assistant headmaster and senior adviser of Roxbury Latin Boys' School. Pojman was inspired by a program at his alma mater, St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland, which connects seniors with those who have died alone.

The story focused on six seniors who volunteered to be pallbearers for a man who died alone in September, and for whom no next of kin was found. He's being buried in a grave with no tombstone, in a city cemetery. The students, dressed in jackets and ties, carry the plain wooden coffin, and take part in a short memorial. They read together, as a group:

Dear Lord, thank you for opening our hearts and minds to this corporal work of mercy. We are here to bear witness to the life and passing of Nicholas Miller. He died alone with no family to comfort him. But today we are his family, we are here as his sons We are honored to stand together before him now, to commemorate his life, and to remember him in death, as we commend his soul to his eternal rest.

After the brief ceremony the students laid flowers. Then they piled back into the van, driving back to school in time for their next lesson. One of those students named Brendan McInerney said, "I know I'm going back, and I'm going to go to school and take another quiz, but all that work, you can get caught up in it. … When you kind of get out of that bubble that you can kind of stuck in, you get perspective on what's really important in life."