Woman's Funeral Had No Attendees, So 30 Strangers Showed Up

ORANGETOWN, N.Y. (CBSNewYork/AP) -- About 30 people have paid their respects to a woman they never met after responding to a call for attendees for a suburban New York funeral at which no one was expected to show up.

The Journal News reports the strangers served as Francine Stein's pallbearers and also helped bury her during the service Wednesday at a cemetery in Orangetown.

Stein died at the age of 83. Rabbi Elchanan Weinbach officiated the service and says there was no eulogy because he didn't know anything about the woman. He learned at the cemetery that Stein was a musician and had taught at the Julliard School.

"For the people who attended, it was an assertion of human dignity," Weinbach said.

The call for volunteers came on Facebook from Weinbach's daughter.

"That really bothered me and I felt, like, 'how could that happen?'" she said. "I just felt if anybody could be present that would be a beautiful thing for this woman."

Mindy Liebman, from Monsey, saw the post and recruited some of the people who came to pay their respects.

"I didn't even feel like I was doing anything super righteous, it was more like human dignity, like no one should die and be buried with no one there to care," she told WCBS 880's Stephanie Colombini.  

She said it was bittersweet to watch strangers bury the woman and remember her life.

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