A group of soldiers training at Hurlburt Field from Fort Bragg last week never got a chance to say “thank you” in person.
By the time the 11 soldiers got up to pay for their meal at Sonny’s BBQ in Fort Walton Beach, the person who’d picked up all of their checks had already left.
“It was such a gracious act,” wrote Rose Lintz, whose husband, Philip, was one of the visiting soldiers. “We don’t know who it was. We don’t know if we’ll ever find out.
“That small way of saying thank you meant so much to them,” she added in the email to the Northwest Florida Daily News.
The soldiers had been in the area for nearly two weeks when they went to Sonny’s on Thursday, their last day in the area.
On the way in, they held the door open for an older man and his wife. The man teased them about wearing the wrong uniforms — telling them the only “right uniform” was that of the Marines.
The younger men and the older couple chatted back and forth until they were all seated.
The couple left first.
When the soldiers got up to pay, the waitress told them their checks had been taken care of.
“There’s 11 of us,” they said. “There has to be a check.”
The waitress told them it had been paid but wouldn’t tell them who had taken care of it.
The soldiers were touched and Philip texted his wife immediately about the kind act.
“Those guys don’t do it for the recognition,” Rose wrote. “The fact that others will give up their time, money or both just to say thank you shows that even though there are some crazy things going on in this nation, people still have the heart of true Americans.”
Daily News Staff Writer Wendy Victora can be reached at 850-315-4478 or wvictora@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @WendyVnwfdn.