About 50% of people serving in the armed forces are married. To put those numbers into perspective, there are currently about 1,328,000 active personnel in the U.S. military.
So if around half of them are married, then that’s hundreds of thousands of spouses overseas trying to take care of things without their partners.
One military mom, Bridget Stevens, ran into a problem with her furnace that she phoned her husband for help with.
Her husband, Bobby Stevens, is the handyman of the family. A faulty furnace wouldn’t be too much of an issue for him to handle.
Though with him deployed overseas, Bridget had to rely on over-the-phone troubleshooting from Bobby.
Despite their best efforts, Bridget couldn’t figure it out.
It was still winter in Pittsburgh where the family lives, and it’d be a hassle to deal with the winter without a furnace.
Bridget needed this furnace to work, so she desperately sought more help.
She called Betlyn Heating and Cooling based in Moon Township. The business is owned by Paul Betlyn.
The January cold can get pretty intense in many parts of the United States. Without proper heating, you could easily get pneumonia, hypothermia, or bronchitis.
Paul came over and took a look at the furnace.
It wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to, so he repaired it without too much trouble.
He’d been doing repair work for over 30 years. He wouldn’t have started his own repair business if he wasn’t good at it.
When he learned about Bridget’s husband serving his country, Paul felt compelled to return a favor the way her husband did for their country.
Repairmen usually charge upwards of 100 US dollars for a job like this.
Anything the size of a furnace, a fridge, or a generator won’t be cheap to fix up.
But this time, Paul only charged a dollar. The receipt read “Deployment discount” before charging the measly fee of 1 dollar.
“I was completely overwhelmed and in shock when Paul handed me the slip.” said Bridget when ABC News picked up the story
This sort of compassion runs in Paul’s family – as far back as his grandfather.
He shared a little fact about the Betlyn family and how it made him who he is. See, Paul’s late grandfather, who shared his name, was a milkman during the great depression.
He would often come to a door with a crying baby and its mother who couldn’t afford the milk. Of course, his grandfather would leave milk for them anyway.
Fast forward two generations and Paul would do a similar favor. Even better, he got to do it for the family of someone serving in the military.
Paul wanted to be clear about how his favor was the least he could do for the family of a deployed, serving citizen.
“I’m not the hero here. The deployed, they’re the heroes.”
Still, his little act of compassion is worth the praise and the wholesome reactions it got.
Watch the little news story about it below.
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