September 7, 2026 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in February 2021, a historic winter storm brought much of Texas to a standstill. Tim Hennessey and his wife, Debbie, braved the icy roads to pick up groceries for themselves and some friends. Then, while they were shopping at their local H-E-B, the power went out. The checkout lines quickly filled, but instead of asking customers to wait, employees began waving them toward the doors. Take your groceries. Get home safely. Don't worry about paying.
Tim couldn't stop thinking about what he had witnessed. When he got home, he wrote about it on Facebook in a post he and Debbie called "The Heart of America." Within days, tens of thousands of people had shared it. Tim Hennessey shares how a grocery store, a winter storm, and a simple act of generosity reminded him of the kindness happening every day across America.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with Our American Stories. And up next,
a story from one of our listeners. And by the way,
we love our listeners' stories. Send them to ouramericanstories.com. They
are truly some of our favorites. When there was a
break in the deep freeze that swept across Texas in
February of 2021, Tim Hennessey and his wife, Deb, piled
(00:31):
into his Jeep and headed for H-E-B, a beloved grocery
store chain for many Texans. It has almost a cult-like following.
Tim shared his story on his Facebook page, and it
immediately went viral. Tim, who's a big fan of our show,
contacted us to see if we'd think our listeners would
want to hear it. And we, of course, said yes.
(00:54):
Here's Tim with a story he and his wife entitled
The Heart of America.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Very quick background. I'm originally from Chicago, and we lived
there many years. And then we moved to, my wife
and I, dad moved to California in 1996. three for
an opportunity and seemed like California was kind of like
the heyday for California things are moving things are pretty
good for us there we lived there 23 years and
(01:20):
then three or four years ago my kids decided to
move to Houston and they basically said you know we
just can't afford to live in California the best we
could do is get an apartment for $ 2, 500 a month
and it was just too expensive and they didn't want
to be house poor so they moved to Texas and
(01:41):
tore our heart out, really, honestly. And we found ourselves
sitting in California at home. We still have a son
who's in California. We found one day, we found ourselves
sitting there going, what are we doing here? We have
a grandson in Houston. And we kind of, you know,
we love California, the beauty, the weather. It's kind of hard.
There's very few places in the entire world you're going
(02:02):
to get that kind of beauty and weather and stuff.
And we thought it's the best of both worlds. We
moved to Texas and We have a lot more freedom
than we have in California. We can save a lot
more money before we retire and we get to see
our grandkids every single day. So a few years ago
we decided to move. I find people are nice everywhere
(02:26):
you live. I think it's what you focus on. There's
good people everywhere. But there's a level of niceness in
Texas with people that kind of struck us as soon
as we moved here. It's almost like, why are you
so nice to us? What's your agenda? It's a different
kind of nice. So that kind of niceness we recognized everywhere.
(02:50):
It's yes sir, no sir, yes ma'am, no ma'am. And
the people wherever you go are just a different level
of nice. So right around February 20th, 21, somewhere in there, 2021,
it was an historic storm here in Texas. 15 degrees
or below, closer to zero a couple days for a
(03:11):
whole week. And Texas is just not built for that.
When I live in Chicago, they had snow plows. They
had salt for the roads. Here, they're not built for that.
They don't have that kind of stuff because it's rarely
that cold. It usually maybe gets down to 30 degrees.
Power was going out for four days off and on.
Every couple hours, it was out. The hardest part was
(03:32):
when the water went out because you start thinking to yourself, okay,
this is getting real now. How long is this water
going to be out? Is this a day, two days,
three days, a week? You know, you start thinking in
these stories that people don't have water for a month.
So in between that, we had snow on one of
the days. And when you get some snow that goes
over the ice, it makes it a little bit more
(03:53):
easy traction-wise because we didn't want to drive anywhere. The
roads were literally impassable. You couldn't go anywhere. You couldn't
even walk on the road. You'd fall down. So we
got some snow. So my wife and I said, well,
we got a little bit of a break. Let's go
to the store. Let's get a few things for some friends.
We decided to drive to a local store here called H-E-B.
(04:13):
H-E-B is like the dominating grocery chain in Texas. And
so we pull in. People were lining up. We got
in line about 50 people. We made the best of it.
We were probably outside for about 20 minutes. Finally, the
line started moving. We got in the store. And about 10,
15 minutes into shopping, the lights went out. And you
(04:36):
literally could hear it go, oh, here we go again.
And so we looked around at each other. It's like, well,
let's just keep shopping until we're told not to shop.
In the back of my mind, I kept thinking, they're
going to come along pretty soon and make us leave.
I was hoping they weren't just going to kick us
out and we have to leave our stuff there. But
I kind of half expected that. So we shopped for
(04:58):
about 10, 15 minutes. And my wife was going to, oh,
she said, oh, I forgot the bananas. So we start
going that way. That's when one of the employees came
along and said, hey, folks, would you mind going to
the front? And we'll get you checked out as quickly
as we can. We have a process for this. So
don't worry. We'll get you out here as quickly as
we can. So, of course, we go up and we
(05:18):
get in line. And it's probably 10, I would say
10 to 12 people in front of us. Most people
have full baskets. Bunch of people behind us. I don't know,
maybe 10, 12. I didn't really look, but there's a
ton behind. So I thought this is going to take
a long time because there was about 15 other lines
of people going from the front to the back of
the store because everybody's checking out at the same time.
(05:39):
So in my mind, I even said to Deb, my wife,
I said, well, this is going to take a long time.
Are they going to get calculators out? What are they
going to do? We weren't sure. So I thought, well,
maybe we're just waiting for the power to kick back
in and maybe they have a generator. So maybe 10,
20 minutes, somewhere in there went by. We barely moved.
I don't even know if we moved up one cart.
And then all of a sudden... Within a few minutes,
(06:01):
we started moving. And as we moved up, a woman's
employee says, do you guys have any alcohol? Like, look
in our carts. And I said, no, but if you're
giving out drinks, I could use one right now. You know,
just kind of make it fun. I like to have
fun with people. And so within a few minutes, I mean,
literally just a couple minutes, we were ushered to an
open aisle. And they waved us over. We go over there.
(06:23):
My wife starts putting stuff on the conveyor belt. And
the woman said, oh, don't put anything up there. We
won't be able to bag anything today. So I thought
it was kind of weird. Okay. So we pushed our
car to the end and she looked at us, looked
at our groceries and kind of motioned with her arm,
like go home and be safe, drive home safe. And
(06:44):
we looked at her like, I even said, who, how
do we pay? And as I'm saying this, I'm watching
all these carts go out the door and it kind
of hit us like, wow, they're literally sending us home
without asking us who we are, looking at what we had,
counting anything, expecting anything from us. And I turned to
(07:08):
my wife. She's tearing up. It was just this wonderful
gesture of this company, because we always want to bash
companies that they're all for profit. This company is literally
letting 200 people walk out of this store without paying
a single dime, without asking who you voted for, what's
your social status, who you are, nothing, because, quite frankly,
(07:33):
because you're our customer. It's just an amazing thing. So
we started leaving, and we're like, this is unbelievable. And
we get to the door, and there's about eight to
10 other employees standing there. And they're kind of greeting us.
It felt like a wedding. Like, okay, everybody, go home,
be safe. They're waving at us. And it became like
(07:54):
a festive mood. And I turned at the edge of
the door, And I said, oh, wait a minute. I
forgot the filet mignon, you know. And they all busted
out laughing. They knew what I was saying. I'm just kidding,
of course, you know. Part of you thinks, man, I
should have got the filet mignon, you know. But, of course,
we're all laughing about it. And we started getting to
(08:14):
the parking lot. And it was very hard to maneuver
the carts because of bumps of ice and snow. And
without bags in the carts, stuff started falling out of
people's carts. And you could see everybody helping each other,
holding on to other people's carts in front and behind them,
helping them. And we all do this every day. But
in that moment, it felt like I wanted to do
(08:34):
even more. It's just, you know, given that... When someone
gives you an act of kindness and generosity for no reason,
first you feel, I don't know, a little guilty. Because
I never felt entitled. But I felt a little... Not guilty.
I don't know what the right word is. But you
felt like, wow, we didn't deserve that. Can I give
to somebody else who they need help, you know? So
(08:57):
with that in mind... I got back to my car.
We started driving home. We were talking about, wow, you
don't see that every day. You know, a store like
H-E-B just did that for its customers. So I told
my wife, I said, I'm going to write about this
story and I'm going to post it on Facebook and
just share with a few of my friends.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And you've been listening to Tim Hennessey tell the story
of an experience in a grocery store when we come
back to Texans here on Our American Stories. And we
(09:39):
continue with our American stories. And when we last left off,
Tim Hennessey was about to post his experience in that
grocery chain on Facebook. And let's pick up with Tim.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
This last year, we've gotten bombarded with nothing but bad news.
And maybe even the last decade or two, it just
seemed like we get more and more bad news. And
because I just saw that as this is the America
that I know and love and that's what I was
going to title the story this is the America I
know and love not the stuff you see in the
(10:11):
newspaper on the news all day you know all the
time so and my wife was thinking about it for
a And I just liked what she said. It just
hit me. I said, you know what? That's what I'm
going to call it. Because it kind of is more succinct.
This is the heart of America. It truly is. So
then she said, you know, Tim, I took a picture.
(10:33):
And I said, you did? She goes, yeah, I didn't
really want people to know I was taking it. And
she said, through her tears, she said, I just captured
that moment for us. It was just a unique thing
to see. I said, well, send me that picture. I'll
include that with the post. And I literally just wrote it.
I actually gave it to my wife in a Word document.
(10:54):
She's my editor because I'm not the best speller. I
hate to admit that. I read voraciously, but I cannot
spell for nothing. Thank you, God, for a spell check.
Like the word separate, forget it. I put an E, A,
I don't know if it's E in the middle, A. Anyway,
I'm getting off topic here. So she edited it for me,
and I just posted it. And then I think our
(11:17):
power went out again a little while later. And then
we woke up on that Wednesday after I posted it.
And then sometime in the middle of the day, I thought, well,
I'll be checking my Facebook post just to see if
a couple hundred of my friends, what they thought of
that story. And I thought, oh my, how does this happen?
(11:38):
At that time, it was like 12 or 13,000 shares,
a couple thousand comments, and probably 10,000 likes. And I'm like,
I don't have that many friends. How does this happen?
How does this happen? And I actually called a friend
of my daughter's who works for Facebook. And I said, Jesse,
(11:58):
what the heck? And she says, Tim, what the heck?
I said, well, you're the expert. Don't tell me what
the heck. How does this happen? And she said, I
don't know, Tim. I think the story hit a nerve
at the right time. I think people needed to hear
good news through all this. So then I got worried. Okay.
I did not expect this to go like this. I
(12:20):
was literally sharing with a few friends. So I got worried.
So I called the store, said, have you heard about
a Facebook post about your store going viral? He goes, yes,
we did. I said, is it okay? And it was
the manager I asked for. And I said, is it okay?
Because I didn't really, I didn't know this was going
to happen. I didn't want to get anybody in trouble.
(12:42):
He said, no, it's all good, sir. I got the
impression without him saying it that it's a very positive
thing for that store, right? So, but I wanted to
call their corporate office too, for a couple of reasons. One,
I wanted to double check that it was okay. And two,
I wanted to find out what their charities were. And
so I got ahold of somebody there and they said
(13:04):
the local food bank is one of their charities. And
also they directed me to their website. And she also
mentioned this place called Lady Lodge. It's a family Christian-based
camp where people go and the donations help pay for
families who can't afford it. And there's no cell service
or internet. It's literally you're going camping. And it's a
few hours away from us here in Texas. So my
(13:27):
wife and I wrote checks to both of them for
more than what we would have paid in groceries because
we felt like it was just such a great gesture.
It was our way of giving back somehow, right? But
the next day, that story just kept getting bigger and bigger.
And it was over 30,000 shares, 34. 200 comments more
likes than I could ever count and then the phone
(13:49):
started ringing I got text messages email messages direct messages
from various news organizations CNN Washington Post Fox News NBC
People Magazine ABC basically the who's who of of media
and then I still got a little bit nervous about
it because I thought well I don't want this company
this is a very private company very a humble company.
(14:14):
They do a lot for the community. HEB does a lot.
They're almost always, whenever there's a disaster, they're almost always
the first there for water or food supplies. They're a
very generous company in Texas, family-oriented. And so I called
them one more time. I said, you know, I've been
doing these interviews. I don't know if anybody saw it,
but have somebody call me back and let me know
(14:36):
if you want me to continue or stop because I'll
stop today because it's not about me. I just wanted to...
Not necessarily to promote the store, but just to show
the goodness that there is in this country. Because there's
a lot of good things in this country. We see
it every single day. We see it all across this country.
We see it in our neighborhoods. How many of us
(14:58):
go out every day and we help somebody, but it
doesn't make the news? Because that's what we're supposed to do.
That's what God wants us to do. That's why we're here.
We're here to be good to each other, right? And so...
They called me back. One of their corporate spokespeople called
me back. I don't know if it was the next
day or that same day. I can't remember. And we
talked for about a half hour on the phone. And
(15:19):
he said, Tim, he goes, let me just tell you something.
He goes, we're not going to stop what you're doing.
We love what you're doing. We're getting a lot of
phone calls right now about if that story is true
or not. And all we do is tell them, yes,
it happened, but that's as far as they go. And basically,
because They don't want to toot their own horn. They
(15:43):
could easily point to their back and go, look at
the name on the back of my jersey. This is H-E-B.
Aren't we great? But that's not what they want to do.
That's how great of a company they are. Oh, I
wanted to add one more thing. And this is from
my wife, so I have to give her credit. This
is my wife, Debbie. I have to give her credit
for this because she says this all the time. And
(16:08):
that's why she took that picture, too. She says this
following phrase, God only needs a moment. Right? God only
needs a moment. And the phrase that I, one of
my favorite quotes that I kind of live my life
(16:29):
by is from Albert Einstein. And it goes like this.
Live your life as if there are no miracles or
everything is a miracle. I probably botched that quote. I'm
a little bit nervous right now. So I live it
as if everything's a miracle. And when you look for
(16:49):
good things, you look for the miracles in life, it
may seem silly to go, wow, you think it's a miracle?
This guy let these people walk out the store? I
think it is. That's what we look for, the moments.
And again, I got to give my wife credit for it.
God only needs a moment. You look for these things,
you see them everywhere. They don't get reported all the time,
but we see them. And I'll give you an example
(17:11):
of another moment or miracle. It happened during the same
week I saw this story. It was in San Antonio, Texas.
I believe it was a 7-Eleven. And it was either
the owner or the manager who wrote this on Twitter.
And she went to her store one morning and All
(17:33):
the water that's left out outside on pallets was missing.
She said over 100 cases of water were missing. And
she thought, well, I guess people needed water because we're
having issues. So she understood it. And she goes to
open the door of the 7-Eleven. And there on the
(17:54):
floor was $ 620 in all kind of different denominational bills.
So in other words, it wasn't just one person who
just put in $ 620. They put They slid through the
slit of the door, not like a mail slot. You
know like some doors have mail? The slit of the door.
They slid in $ 620 in ones, twos, tens, twenties, and
(18:14):
there's a picture of it. That is a miracle, right?
So we see these all over the place. And I'll
give you a couple other examples. I don't know if
it's a great example, but in my neighborhood, and probably
all across Texas, people were out walking... driving when we could,
(18:35):
going house to house, checking on people. How are you doing?
Did you know you can melt snow and ice to
put in the back of your toilet to flush? I
didn't know that. Okay, great. And we see this everywhere,
all over this country, like I said, a thousand times
a day. How many times have you heard of a
police officer, and this happens all the time, maybe somebody
standing in front of them doesn't have enough money to
(18:56):
pay for their food or whatever, and that officer, they're
not going to make the most money in the world,
will take out their own money and pay for that, right?
Every once in a while we hear that story, but
that happens all the time, those kind of things. So
miracles do happen every single day. This world is a miracle,
and we're all here, and the sun rises every day
(19:16):
and sets every day. We take it for granted, but
it's still a miracle. You know, when I go turn
the lights on now, I think twice about it because
we didn't have it for a few days. When I
turn the faucet on, I think twice about it now.
A week ago, It was like not even in your mind.
(19:37):
Those are miracles if you think about it that way.
Some water is coming from some plant. It's treated. The
electricity is coming from some place. It comes into my
place and it gives me light. gives me the power
of my refrigerator, my TV, my stove, all these things.
We take it for granted. We have delegated so many
things in our lives that's just mundane, but they're miracles.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
And you've been listening to Tim Hennessey. The Heart of America,
a story of the Hennessey family, and H-E-B, a grocery
chain that wanted nothing, no credit, No adulation. They just
did the right thing. This great story here on Our
American Stories.
And we continue with Our American Stories. And up next,
a story from one of our listeners. And by the way,
we love our listeners' stories. Send them to ouramericanstories.com. They
are truly some of our favorites. When there was a
break in the deep freeze that swept across Texas in
February of 2021, Tim Hennessey and his wife, Deb, piled
(00:31):
into his Jeep and headed for H-E-B, a beloved grocery
store chain for many Texans. It has almost a cult-like following.
Tim shared his story on his Facebook page, and it
immediately went viral. Tim, who's a big fan of our show,
contacted us to see if we'd think our listeners would
want to hear it. And we, of course, said yes.
(00:54):
Here's Tim with a story he and his wife entitled
The Heart of America.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Very quick background. I'm originally from Chicago, and we lived
there many years. And then we moved to, my wife
and I, dad moved to California in 1996. three for
an opportunity and seemed like California was kind of like
the heyday for California things are moving things are pretty
good for us there we lived there 23 years and
(01:20):
then three or four years ago my kids decided to
move to Houston and they basically said you know we
just can't afford to live in California the best we
could do is get an apartment for $ 2, 500 a month
and it was just too expensive and they didn't want
to be house poor so they moved to Texas and
(01:41):
tore our heart out, really, honestly. And we found ourselves
sitting in California at home. We still have a son
who's in California. We found one day, we found ourselves
sitting there going, what are we doing here? We have
a grandson in Houston. And we kind of, you know,
we love California, the beauty, the weather. It's kind of hard.
There's very few places in the entire world you're going
(02:02):
to get that kind of beauty and weather and stuff.
And we thought it's the best of both worlds. We
moved to Texas and We have a lot more freedom
than we have in California. We can save a lot
more money before we retire and we get to see
our grandkids every single day. So a few years ago
we decided to move. I find people are nice everywhere
(02:26):
you live. I think it's what you focus on. There's
good people everywhere. But there's a level of niceness in
Texas with people that kind of struck us as soon
as we moved here. It's almost like, why are you
so nice to us? What's your agenda? It's a different
kind of nice. So that kind of niceness we recognized everywhere.
(02:50):
It's yes sir, no sir, yes ma'am, no ma'am. And
the people wherever you go are just a different level
of nice. So right around February 20th, 21, somewhere in there, 2021,
it was an historic storm here in Texas. 15 degrees
or below, closer to zero a couple days for a
(03:11):
whole week. And Texas is just not built for that.
When I live in Chicago, they had snow plows. They
had salt for the roads. Here, they're not built for that.
They don't have that kind of stuff because it's rarely
that cold. It usually maybe gets down to 30 degrees.
Power was going out for four days off and on.
Every couple hours, it was out. The hardest part was
(03:32):
when the water went out because you start thinking to yourself, okay,
this is getting real now. How long is this water
going to be out? Is this a day, two days,
three days, a week? You know, you start thinking in
these stories that people don't have water for a month.
So in between that, we had snow on one of
the days. And when you get some snow that goes
over the ice, it makes it a little bit more
(03:53):
easy traction-wise because we didn't want to drive anywhere. The
roads were literally impassable. You couldn't go anywhere. You couldn't
even walk on the road. You'd fall down. So we
got some snow. So my wife and I said, well,
we got a little bit of a break. Let's go
to the store. Let's get a few things for some friends.
We decided to drive to a local store here called H-E-B.
(04:13):
H-E-B is like the dominating grocery chain in Texas. And
so we pull in. People were lining up. We got
in line about 50 people. We made the best of it.
We were probably outside for about 20 minutes. Finally, the
line started moving. We got in the store. And about 10,
15 minutes into shopping, the lights went out. And you
(04:36):
literally could hear it go, oh, here we go again.
And so we looked around at each other. It's like, well,
let's just keep shopping until we're told not to shop.
In the back of my mind, I kept thinking, they're
going to come along pretty soon and make us leave.
I was hoping they weren't just going to kick us
out and we have to leave our stuff there. But
I kind of half expected that. So we shopped for
(04:58):
about 10, 15 minutes. And my wife was going to, oh,
she said, oh, I forgot the bananas. So we start
going that way. That's when one of the employees came
along and said, hey, folks, would you mind going to
the front? And we'll get you checked out as quickly
as we can. We have a process for this. So
don't worry. We'll get you out here as quickly as
we can. So, of course, we go up and we
(05:18):
get in line. And it's probably 10, I would say
10 to 12 people in front of us. Most people
have full baskets. Bunch of people behind us. I don't know,
maybe 10, 12. I didn't really look, but there's a
ton behind. So I thought this is going to take
a long time because there was about 15 other lines
of people going from the front to the back of
the store because everybody's checking out at the same time.
(05:39):
So in my mind, I even said to Deb, my wife,
I said, well, this is going to take a long time.
Are they going to get calculators out? What are they
going to do? We weren't sure. So I thought, well,
maybe we're just waiting for the power to kick back
in and maybe they have a generator. So maybe 10,
20 minutes, somewhere in there went by. We barely moved.
I don't even know if we moved up one cart.
And then all of a sudden... Within a few minutes,
(06:01):
we started moving. And as we moved up, a woman's
employee says, do you guys have any alcohol? Like, look
in our carts. And I said, no, but if you're
giving out drinks, I could use one right now. You know,
just kind of make it fun. I like to have
fun with people. And so within a few minutes, I mean,
literally just a couple minutes, we were ushered to an
open aisle. And they waved us over. We go over there.
(06:23):
My wife starts putting stuff on the conveyor belt. And
the woman said, oh, don't put anything up there. We
won't be able to bag anything today. So I thought
it was kind of weird. Okay. So we pushed our
car to the end and she looked at us, looked
at our groceries and kind of motioned with her arm,
like go home and be safe, drive home safe. And
(06:44):
we looked at her like, I even said, who, how
do we pay? And as I'm saying this, I'm watching
all these carts go out the door and it kind
of hit us like, wow, they're literally sending us home
without asking us who we are, looking at what we had,
counting anything, expecting anything from us. And I turned to
(07:08):
my wife. She's tearing up. It was just this wonderful
gesture of this company, because we always want to bash
companies that they're all for profit. This company is literally
letting 200 people walk out of this store without paying
a single dime, without asking who you voted for, what's
your social status, who you are, nothing, because, quite frankly,
(07:33):
because you're our customer. It's just an amazing thing. So
we started leaving, and we're like, this is unbelievable. And
we get to the door, and there's about eight to
10 other employees standing there. And they're kind of greeting us.
It felt like a wedding. Like, okay, everybody, go home,
be safe. They're waving at us. And it became like
(07:54):
a festive mood. And I turned at the edge of
the door, And I said, oh, wait a minute. I
forgot the filet mignon, you know. And they all busted
out laughing. They knew what I was saying. I'm just kidding,
of course, you know. Part of you thinks, man, I
should have got the filet mignon, you know. But, of course,
we're all laughing about it. And we started getting to
(08:14):
the parking lot. And it was very hard to maneuver
the carts because of bumps of ice and snow. And
without bags in the carts, stuff started falling out of
people's carts. And you could see everybody helping each other,
holding on to other people's carts in front and behind them,
helping them. And we all do this every day. But
in that moment, it felt like I wanted to do
(08:34):
even more. It's just, you know, given that... When someone
gives you an act of kindness and generosity for no reason,
first you feel, I don't know, a little guilty. Because
I never felt entitled. But I felt a little... Not guilty.
I don't know what the right word is. But you
felt like, wow, we didn't deserve that. Can I give
to somebody else who they need help, you know? So
(08:57):
with that in mind... I got back to my car.
We started driving home. We were talking about, wow, you
don't see that every day. You know, a store like
H-E-B just did that for its customers. So I told
my wife, I said, I'm going to write about this
story and I'm going to post it on Facebook and
just share with a few of my friends.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And you've been listening to Tim Hennessey tell the story
of an experience in a grocery store when we come
back to Texans here on Our American Stories. And we
(09:39):
continue with our American stories. And when we last left off,
Tim Hennessey was about to post his experience in that
grocery chain on Facebook. And let's pick up with Tim.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
This last year, we've gotten bombarded with nothing but bad news.
And maybe even the last decade or two, it just
seemed like we get more and more bad news. And
because I just saw that as this is the America
that I know and love and that's what I was
going to title the story this is the America I
know and love not the stuff you see in the
(10:11):
newspaper on the news all day you know all the
time so and my wife was thinking about it for
a And I just liked what she said. It just
hit me. I said, you know what? That's what I'm
going to call it. Because it kind of is more succinct.
This is the heart of America. It truly is. So
then she said, you know, Tim, I took a picture.
(10:33):
And I said, you did? She goes, yeah, I didn't
really want people to know I was taking it. And
she said, through her tears, she said, I just captured
that moment for us. It was just a unique thing
to see. I said, well, send me that picture. I'll
include that with the post. And I literally just wrote it.
I actually gave it to my wife in a Word document.
(10:54):
She's my editor because I'm not the best speller. I
hate to admit that. I read voraciously, but I cannot
spell for nothing. Thank you, God, for a spell check.
Like the word separate, forget it. I put an E, A,
I don't know if it's E in the middle, A. Anyway,
I'm getting off topic here. So she edited it for me,
and I just posted it. And then I think our
(11:17):
power went out again a little while later. And then
we woke up on that Wednesday after I posted it.
And then sometime in the middle of the day, I thought, well,
I'll be checking my Facebook post just to see if
a couple hundred of my friends, what they thought of
that story. And I thought, oh my, how does this happen?
(11:38):
At that time, it was like 12 or 13,000 shares,
a couple thousand comments, and probably 10,000 likes. And I'm like,
I don't have that many friends. How does this happen?
How does this happen? And I actually called a friend
of my daughter's who works for Facebook. And I said, Jesse,
(11:58):
what the heck? And she says, Tim, what the heck?
I said, well, you're the expert. Don't tell me what
the heck. How does this happen? And she said, I
don't know, Tim. I think the story hit a nerve
at the right time. I think people needed to hear
good news through all this. So then I got worried. Okay.
I did not expect this to go like this. I
(12:20):
was literally sharing with a few friends. So I got worried.
So I called the store, said, have you heard about
a Facebook post about your store going viral? He goes, yes,
we did. I said, is it okay? And it was
the manager I asked for. And I said, is it okay?
Because I didn't really, I didn't know this was going
to happen. I didn't want to get anybody in trouble.
(12:42):
He said, no, it's all good, sir. I got the
impression without him saying it that it's a very positive
thing for that store, right? So, but I wanted to
call their corporate office too, for a couple of reasons. One,
I wanted to double check that it was okay. And two,
I wanted to find out what their charities were. And
so I got ahold of somebody there and they said
(13:04):
the local food bank is one of their charities. And
also they directed me to their website. And she also
mentioned this place called Lady Lodge. It's a family Christian-based
camp where people go and the donations help pay for
families who can't afford it. And there's no cell service
or internet. It's literally you're going camping. And it's a
few hours away from us here in Texas. So my
(13:27):
wife and I wrote checks to both of them for
more than what we would have paid in groceries because
we felt like it was just such a great gesture.
It was our way of giving back somehow, right? But
the next day, that story just kept getting bigger and bigger.
And it was over 30,000 shares, 34. 200 comments more
likes than I could ever count and then the phone
(13:49):
started ringing I got text messages email messages direct messages
from various news organizations CNN Washington Post Fox News NBC
People Magazine ABC basically the who's who of of media
and then I still got a little bit nervous about
it because I thought well I don't want this company
this is a very private company very a humble company.
(14:14):
They do a lot for the community. HEB does a lot.
They're almost always, whenever there's a disaster, they're almost always
the first there for water or food supplies. They're a
very generous company in Texas, family-oriented. And so I called
them one more time. I said, you know, I've been
doing these interviews. I don't know if anybody saw it,
but have somebody call me back and let me know
(14:36):
if you want me to continue or stop because I'll
stop today because it's not about me. I just wanted to...
Not necessarily to promote the store, but just to show
the goodness that there is in this country. Because there's
a lot of good things in this country. We see
it every single day. We see it all across this country.
We see it in our neighborhoods. How many of us
(14:58):
go out every day and we help somebody, but it
doesn't make the news? Because that's what we're supposed to do.
That's what God wants us to do. That's why we're here.
We're here to be good to each other, right? And so...
They called me back. One of their corporate spokespeople called
me back. I don't know if it was the next
day or that same day. I can't remember. And we
talked for about a half hour on the phone. And
(15:19):
he said, Tim, he goes, let me just tell you something.
He goes, we're not going to stop what you're doing.
We love what you're doing. We're getting a lot of
phone calls right now about if that story is true
or not. And all we do is tell them, yes,
it happened, but that's as far as they go. And basically,
because They don't want to toot their own horn. They
(15:43):
could easily point to their back and go, look at
the name on the back of my jersey. This is H-E-B.
Aren't we great? But that's not what they want to do.
That's how great of a company they are. Oh, I
wanted to add one more thing. And this is from
my wife, so I have to give her credit. This
is my wife, Debbie. I have to give her credit
for this because she says this all the time. And
(16:08):
that's why she took that picture, too. She says this
following phrase, God only needs a moment. Right? God only
needs a moment. And the phrase that I, one of
my favorite quotes that I kind of live my life
(16:29):
by is from Albert Einstein. And it goes like this.
Live your life as if there are no miracles or
everything is a miracle. I probably botched that quote. I'm
a little bit nervous right now. So I live it
as if everything's a miracle. And when you look for
(16:49):
good things, you look for the miracles in life, it
may seem silly to go, wow, you think it's a miracle?
This guy let these people walk out the store? I
think it is. That's what we look for, the moments.
And again, I got to give my wife credit for it.
God only needs a moment. You look for these things,
you see them everywhere. They don't get reported all the time,
but we see them. And I'll give you an example
(17:11):
of another moment or miracle. It happened during the same
week I saw this story. It was in San Antonio, Texas.
I believe it was a 7-Eleven. And it was either
the owner or the manager who wrote this on Twitter.
And she went to her store one morning and All
(17:33):
the water that's left out outside on pallets was missing.
She said over 100 cases of water were missing. And
she thought, well, I guess people needed water because we're
having issues. So she understood it. And she goes to
open the door of the 7-Eleven. And there on the
(17:54):
floor was $ 620 in all kind of different denominational bills.
So in other words, it wasn't just one person who
just put in $ 620. They put They slid through the
slit of the door, not like a mail slot. You
know like some doors have mail? The slit of the door.
They slid in $ 620 in ones, twos, tens, twenties, and
(18:14):
there's a picture of it. That is a miracle, right?
So we see these all over the place. And I'll
give you a couple other examples. I don't know if
it's a great example, but in my neighborhood, and probably
all across Texas, people were out walking... driving when we could,
(18:35):
going house to house, checking on people. How are you doing?
Did you know you can melt snow and ice to
put in the back of your toilet to flush? I
didn't know that. Okay, great. And we see this everywhere,
all over this country, like I said, a thousand times
a day. How many times have you heard of a
police officer, and this happens all the time, maybe somebody
standing in front of them doesn't have enough money to
(18:56):
pay for their food or whatever, and that officer, they're
not going to make the most money in the world,
will take out their own money and pay for that, right?
Every once in a while we hear that story, but
that happens all the time, those kind of things. So
miracles do happen every single day. This world is a miracle,
and we're all here, and the sun rises every day
(19:16):
and sets every day. We take it for granted, but
it's still a miracle. You know, when I go turn
the lights on now, I think twice about it because
we didn't have it for a few days. When I
turn the faucet on, I think twice about it now.
A week ago, It was like not even in your mind.
(19:37):
Those are miracles if you think about it that way.
Some water is coming from some plant. It's treated. The
electricity is coming from some place. It comes into my
place and it gives me light. gives me the power
of my refrigerator, my TV, my stove, all these things.
We take it for granted. We have delegated so many
things in our lives that's just mundane, but they're miracles.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
And you've been listening to Tim Hennessey. The Heart of America,
a story of the Hennessey family, and H-E-B, a grocery
chain that wanted nothing, no credit, No adulation. They just
did the right thing. This great story here on Our
American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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