Morgan Wheeler was about to pull out of her parking spot at Walmart when she was blocked by a man in a wheelchair passing by. She looked at the veteran in her rearview mirror, waving apologetically for delaying. However, Wheeler, who works at a veterinary hospital, did not back up but got out of her car and walked up to the veteran. She asked him if she could help him with his shopping.
She wrote in a Facebook post: “I asked him if I could assist him with his shopping today, and he, quite grumpily, said that he was doing just fine and was not getting much anyways.”
“Me, being as stubborn as I am, insisted and proceeded to push him and tell him a little about myself. He interrupted me and said that he only needed help to the door, to which I picked up where I had left off before he interrupted me. I told him about Fayetteville, and my horses, and my nephews (I had parked a good ways away from the doors).”
Wheeler then reached the doors and “continued to push him and talk. We reached the produce area and I asked him to tell me about himself.”
“He reluctantly looked at me and began telling me that he lived in Sod- Lincoln County, and that he just recently lost his wife. I asked him if he was a veteran, to which he replied that he was- but with pain on his face, so I changed the subject and asked if he had made a shopping list,” she added.
He only had peanut butter, bananas, soup, and bread on his shopping list, but he said items like milk, eggs, and butter might spoil on the way back home. The unnamed veteran also had to hitchhike to get there.
She called him a taxi cab and he started to cry.
Wheeler added: “I knelt down and asked him what was wrong and he replied, that I ‘was doing far too much for an old man that I barely knew.’ I told him that where I am from, and from the family I was raised in, we help one another, no matter the task and that I had never met a stranger. I also told him that he deserved everything I was doing for him because he fought for my freedom and sacrificed so much. We made it to the check out line and I paid for his groceries, against his request. When we got outside, we waited for the taxi together. He thanked me over and over again and appeared–to me–to have been in a much better mood than when I found him.”
The woman said that it was “truly humbling” when it happened.
“I consider myself extremely blessed to have the capability of understanding what is truly important in this world. THAT man was a HERO, and far too many will say otherwise,” she explained.
In an interview with Today, Wheeler said her actions should not be considered unusual.
“I’m so glad the post has touched so many people,” Wheeler told the show. “There are far too many people like that gentleman who need help and I want to encourage everyone to help others. Trust me, it will be a very humbling experience.”
Wheeler noted that she never learned the man’s name.
