The internet is praising a young woman after she shared her story of how she helped a struggling wheelchair-bound veteran at a West Virginia Walmart.
Morgan Wheeler, 21, was about to leave the Walmart parking lot when she saw a man cross her path in his wheelchair, waving apologetically at her for the delay, Wheeler explained in a Facebook post, according to Independent Journal Review.
Wheeler, a veterinary hospital employee, noticed the man was missing his right leg from the knee down, so she got out of her car and asked if he needed help with his grocery shopping.
The man initially refused the offer, but Wheeler insisted. She introduced herself and started wheeling him toward the store as the two had a conversation.
In a Facebook post, Wheeler explained:
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).
And when I reached the doors, I 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.
The veteran only had four items on his shopping list: peanut butter, soup, bread and bananas. Wheeler asked if he needed other things like milk, eggs and butter, and he replied that he might not make it home before they spoil. He told Wheeler he hitched a ride to the Walmart with a trucker.
Wheeler decided to add a few items to the man’s cart before calling a taxi for him. That’s when the proud veteran was brought to tears.
Wheeler wrote:
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.
Wheeler said when she returned to her car after the taxi arrived, she began to tear up as well.
“Today was a truly humbling experience for me, and I consider myself extremely blessed to have the capability of understanding what is truly important in this world,” she wrote in the Facebook post. “THAT man was a HERO, and far too many will say otherwise.”
Wheeler’s post has since gone viral, being shared more than 600,000 times on Facebook.
Wheeler said that while she is grateful for the positive response, she feels what she did should not be considered unusual.
“I’m so glad the post has touched so many people,” she told the “Today” show, according to the Daily Mail. “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.”
Tags: Morgan Wheeler, Veteran, Walmart, Facebook Post
