DUBLIN, Ga. — Complete strangers in Dublin showed up to pay their respects to a man named Herman Melton earlier this week.
He was known in town as "the waving man."
In his later years, he made a difference simply by sitting in his wheelchair and raising a hand.
“Trying to make it a better world," Herman said in 2022. "It's hard but I'm going to do it anyway.”
Alma Horne is Herman Melton's sister and says ever since childhood he was joking around.
“Oh yea, happy no matter what,” she said.
In his mid-70s, Herman changed the world on Bellevue Avenue, and he did it one wave at a time.
“Every time I'd come just about, he'd be out there waving,” Alma recalled.
That positive attitude along with a sidewalk flick of the wrist inspired the young, the old and practically everyone he met.
Noah Porter volunteered at the assisted living facility Herman lived in.
“I discovered the greatest thing we have in life is giving people our attention and Herman did that,” he said.
In a way, Herman died doing what he loved. In May, he was out waving and suffered a stroke. He fell and broke his tailbone. He would died from complications of all of that.
“And he had a smile on his face just as he left this world my hand was in his hand," Alma remembered.
The man who dug wells for a living became beloved.
His friend John Brantley said Herman beamed with all of the attention.
“He would get a haircut or go out to eat, and they'd say We know you, we know you,'” John explained.
“And they would yell 'Herman, Hey Herman!'" Alma said. "I know he didn't know them. Maybe they didn't know them very well, but they knew of him."
A simple gesture to hundreds of people a day will earn that kind of reputation.
But to Herman, it was more than just waving. He truly had compassion for everyone that crossed his path.
“I always say Lord bless 'em everybody coming this way,” Herman said in 2022.
“If anyone goes to heaven he will have a front-row seat,” John said.
And in that seat, chances are he'll be grinning from ear to ear and waving.