According to a trending series of tweets from a former Obama campaign spokeswoman, a generous Florida man has given more than $13,000 to strangers he meets at Waffle House.
Kevin Cate, a political ad creator, noticed the unidentified, elderly man with white hair sitting alone in a table at a café in Midway, Florida, and affixing a stack of folded money to notes.
Cate claimed the man informed him he had been handing out $1 and $5 cash to children and others since 2014 when he was questioned what he was doing.
He revealed to Cate that he adds a note with the straightforward message “Love Everybody” printed in large, bold characters to every bill.
The man claimed that in order to put together fresh batches of cash to distribute, he prints and cuts out the notes every few days.
The man said to Cate that those were the final things his mother spoke to him before she passed away when she was asked why he picked that statement to distribute to so many people.
‘Love every body,’ he said to Cate, ‘She didn’t say ‘I love you,’ she said ‘love every body.’ So that’s what I’m doing. Loving every body.’
On Saturday night, Cate tweeted about the man. Since then, it has been retweeted about 7,000 times and liked almost 44,000 times.
People have flocked to the comments area of the post to express how moved they were by the man’s experience, with many just adding, “Thank you for sharing this.”
Others talked about their personal encounters with strangers’ generosity.
‘After my father died, an old family friend wrote to me: ‘Your dad always helped people out,’ one user commented, ‘He knew sometimes they were taking advantage of him, but he didn’t care. He figured it was worth it because you never know when someone really is in need.’
Another noted how far the man’s mother’s simple message had gone.
‘Thank you for taking the time to talk to this gentleman and sharing his story,’ one person wrote, ‘He has no idea how many people his mother’s message has touched… and we didn’t get money or the note. We got the love his mama intended! What a legacy she left.’