Strangers raise $117,000 to keep 110-year-old WWII veteran in his home

Richard Overton.
(Image credit: YouTube.com/Fox7Austin)

Richard Overton, 110, has lived in his Austin, Texas, home for nearly 70 years, and thanks to the kindness of strangers, he's not leaving anytime soon.

Overton, believed to be the oldest living World War II veteran in the United States, was married but never had children, and his closest relative is a 95-year-old cousin who lives a few doors away. When his caretaker retired, Overton's family was worried he would have to leave for a retirement home. "We all knew that if you move Richard out of his home, he'd die," third cousin Volma Overton Jr. told ABC News. "That home is everything for him."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.