ST. PAUL — Dozens of people, many of them strangers, gathered to honor a homeless Marine veteran who died alone in a St. Paul park.

Fifty-eight-year-old Jerome Jackson was given military rites Thursday at a funeral conducted by Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church. Jackson’s frozen body was found last month in a makeshift shack in St. Paul’s Indian Mounds Park.

The veteran’s brother, Don Jackson, said his sibling had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and wanted little to do with his family. Jackson said his brother wanted to be his own man and in charge of his destiny.

Jackson’s funeral procession wound past the river bluffs where his body was found to Fort Snelling National Cemetery. Members of the Arcade-Phalen American Legion Post 577 served as pallbearers.