James Barger was working at a local fast food restaurant when he got a stroke of good luck with a job at a cemetery.
This was not just any cemetery, though. It was Mountain Home National Cemetery, where he is a federal employee charged with maintaining a national shrine.
“It’s greatly benefited (me) to be a federal employee and to just serve the veterans that have laid the foundation before myself,” Barger said. “To give back to them is a blessing.”
Barger is one of seven local veterans participating in a program designed to help end veteran homelessness by providing apprenticeships in cemetery caretaking.
Read more at the Johnson City Press.