Mother’s Day Lonely For Mom, Restaurant Staff Turns It Around

MYRTLE BEACH, SC — Barbara Foy was having a rotten Mother’s Day. Her son hadn’t called her and there had been a long silence between the two. So she went to lunch by herself at the Ruby Tuesday near Surfside Beach.

The staff noticed. Kabria Hasty was the first to approach Foy and wish her a happy Mother’s Day. Foy teared up at the greeting.

Hasty shared the reaction with co-workers Christianna Smith and Mariah Brown. Rather than let Foy feel unloved on Mother’s Day, they pooled their money and went to a nearby Dollar Tree store and put together a gift bag and also paid for her lunch.

"We were not OK with a mother feeling unloved on Mother’s Day," Brown told NBC’s “Today” show. "Growing up, I was told to treat others the way you wanna be treated. Me personally, if that was anybody’s mom I would have done the same thing."

Foy was overwhelmed

"I had all this on me and these girls didn’t know anything about me, just that I was sitting by myself. For their kindness — what they did for me to take so much off of me, to lift me up, " Foy told “Today”

“I just can’t believe what they did,” she said. “People don’t do that.”

She called the experience “life changing.”

“Those girls are so special, the managers, all of them — couldn’t have shown me so much kindness,” she said. “They told me I was part of their family.”

Lauren Nave, one of the restaurant’s managers, said that the entire staff and customers conspired to make Mother’s Day special for Foy. A customer even made sure she got roses for the day.

“I think we were all almost in tears by the end of the story,” Nave told television station WMBF. “We wanted to make sure that she knew how special she was on Mother’s Day.”

Foy said she’s never been made to feel so special.

“I really felt like I was queen for a day — mother for a day!” she told WMBF.

As a happy postscript to the story, Foy reached her son on the phone around midnight and told him what had happened.

"He does love me," she told “Today."

"I bet he won’t forget Mother’s Day again or forget to call his poor little mama."

Photo via Shutterstock / media_digital