Johnnie Hodges, who served in the Navy in WWII, returned to his home in Buffalo, New York, in time for Veterans Day after a GoFundMe drive raised enough money to pay off his second mortgage. Hodges had been evicted this summer after falling behind on mortgage payments and owed more than $70,000. The GoFundMe account was started by someone who read about Hodges' plight in the Buffalo News and went viral after Yahoo! Real Estate shared the story.

From Yahoo!:

Hodges was surrounded by his family and friends, as well as fellow veterans and elected officials, as he made his way to the porch of his home on Humboldt Parkway in Buffalo, New York. A crowd of about 100 people cheered him on, and his grandsons introduced him by simply saying, “This is our granddad, and he’s the man.”

“It couldn’t have been any better,” Johnnie Hodges told Yahoo Real Estate. “We just had a little rain, but that didn’t stop anybody.”

 

Read the whole story here.