8-Year-Old Gold Star Kid Gives Ohio Soldier the Gift of a 'Lifetime;' Honors Deceased Father With His Act of Kindness
After finding a $20 bill in a Cracker Barrel parking lot in Toledo, Ohio, 8-year-old Myles Eckert decided to give the money to a soldier he had never met before.
"I kind-of wanted to get a video game, but then I decided not to," Eckert told CBS News. Instead of spending the money on himself, Myles decided to give the money to a member of the Air National Guard who was dining at the restaurant, "because he was a soldier, and soldiers remind me of my dad."
Lt. Col. Frank Dailey, the soldier who received the gift, considers Myles' act of kindness as an honor.
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"It's incredible being recognized in such a manner," said Dailey, who told CBS that he would remember the gift for "a lifetime."
Myles wrapped his $20 bill in a precious note addressed to an anonymous soldier. "Dear Soldier," he wrote, "My dad was a soldier. He's in heaven now. I found this $20 in the parking lot when we got here."
He further explained that his family values generosity. "We like to pay it forward in my family. It's your lucky day!"
"Thank you for your service," he concluded, signing, "Myles Eckert, a gold star kid."
Army Sergeant Andy Eckert died in Iraq, five weeks after his son, Myles, was born. After giving Dailey the $20, Myles asked this mother, Tiffany, to drive him to the cemetery so he could visit his father's grave, alone.
"He wanted to go see his dad, and he wanted to go by himself that day," she explained.
Dailey expressed deep gratitude for Myles' gift. "I look at it every day," he said, adding that Myles gave him much more than $20, he gave him "a lifetime direction, for sure."
Myles' mother never anticipated that his story would be featured on national television, she told The Blaze in a recent interview.
"Good deeds like this are not out of the ordinary for the Eckerts," she said. "This is actually something that we do on a regular basis. We pay it forward often. This story just happened to take off."
After the story aired on CBS Friday, Myles became a local celebrity.
"After church we went to Five Guys and we walked in and there were some soldiers from the 180th and we went over there to say thank you for your service," Tiffany recalled. To her surprise, "they all knew who Myles was."
"While we were there it was like every single person knew who Myles was, and they were coming up to him in tears and giving him $20 and wanting pictures with him," Tiffany said.
"I couldn't be more proud, but this is our normal life," she added. "Kindness always wins, and that's something I've been teaching our kids forever."
