Navy vet drives nail into high cost of dying

The Navy vet says the high cost of living and the high cost of dying got his attention.

For veterans, burial is free at the Mount Tahoma National Cemetery. But some veterans worry about the cost of a casket.

"If a person's got a lot of money, it's something you don't even think about. But if you don't have much money, you think about it a lot," Thompson said.

The folks at Tahoma told him caskets are 7 feet long, 3 feet high and 3 feet wide, including handles. Thompson took those dimensions to a lumber store.

"Everybody thought I was going to build a tool box, a nice large tool box. And I said, 'No, it's my casket.' And they looked at me like, 'What's with this guy?'"

But for Thompson, there was nothing complicated about this job. He stained the plywood and fitted it with eight handles. He even decorated it with pictures for the Navy, the Airborne, the Army and the Marines.

"I had to build my own casket to show them what could be done," he said. "You can make this to be just as beautiful as anything they are selling on the market for $6,000. And it won't cost you more than $400 to do the entire thing."

Thompson even tried it out and told me it was cozy, but hard to get out of.

At the senior center Thompson frequents, no one is laughing. Thompson is known as a sort of penny-pinching hero.

"He built his own coffin. I built my own urn," said Ed Morris.

Thompson doesn't want this story to be all about him. He says he's trying to reach out to other veterans during these tough economic times.