Grieving Parents Start College Fund for Waitress Who Picked Up Their Tab
Grieving mother Debbie Davis Riddle, center, with her husband, Shaun, and waitress Kayla Lane. Debbie Riddle has started a scholarship fund to help Lane and her colleagues pay for college. (Photo: Debbie Davis Riddle)
A grieving couple in Fort Worth, Texas, whose story went viral after a waitress picked up their tab at a local restaurant has started a scholarship fund in memory of their daughter. The fund will help the employee and her colleagues pay for college.
A month after Debbie Davis Riddle and her husband, Shaun, lost their nine-week-old daughter, Glory, to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), the couple had lunch at the West Side Café. While serving the parents, who are regulars at the restaurant, waitress Kayla Lane learned that Glory had died, and decided to foot the couple’s bill. “I wanted them to know that even people who don’t know them feel for them and support them,” Lane told Yahoo Parenting at the time. “I did it because it was amazing to see their strength through it all — they still prayed before their meal and everything.”
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After the meal, Riddle posted a photo of the check on Facebook. It was a note that said, “Your ticket has been paid for. We are terribly sorry for your loss.” The photo has been liked nearly 20,000 times and shared more than 10,500 times.
Glory Riddle was nine weeks old when she died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Her parents are starting a scholarship fund in her memory. (Photo: Debbie Davis Riddle/GoFundMe)
Riddle and Lane have since become friends, and Riddle tells Yahoo Parenting that Lane has been through struggles of her own. “She is a student, 21 years old, paying for herself to go to college, and has her own home and is paying for that, too,” she says. “I thought how tough it must be to have to be in school and work a full-time job, and yet she doesn’t think twice about helping other people. It got me thinking about all the kids who work at the West Side Café. Everyone there is so nice and so friendly, and the people who work there do this sort of thing all the time. They just really care.”
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As Riddle continued to grieve for her daughter, she had it in her mind that she wanted to do something for the servers at the restaurant who had been so supportive of her. Then, as she was going through Glory’s closet one day, Riddle came upon a onesie that Glory had received from her grandmother. “It said, ‘Kisses, 25 cents. I’m saving for my college fund,’” Riddle says. “I thought, I’m never going to be able to watch her grow up and go to college, but I wanted to keep her memory alive, and that’s when I thought of Kayla.”
This onesie, which Glory only got a chance to wear once, inspired the scholarship fund that will help employees at a local restaurant pay for college. (Photo: Debbie Davis Riddle/GoFundMe)
Riddle decided to launch a scholarship fund in Glory’s memory, which would help Kayla and other employees at West Side Café pay for school. “These wonderful people are our future, the ones studying to teach our children as well as going into the health care and various other fields to make a difference in this world,” Riddle wrote on the Glory Riddle Memorial Scholarship’s GoFundMe page. “We would like to award at least 5 scholarships totaling $4,000 each, but if we do not meet that goal, we would consider anything a blessing. If we exceed our goal, extra scholarships will be able to be awarded!” Since it was posted last week, the fund has raised nearly $2,500 of its $20,000 goal, including a $500 donation from West Side Café owner Tracey Sanford.
Employees at the restaurant have already expressed their appreciation to Riddle. One waitress, who has a son and is working her way through college, is hoping the scholarship will help her become a phlebotomist, as she’s always been interested in health care, Riddle says.
There will be an application process for workers at West Side who hope to benefit from the scholarship fund, but the first recipient will be Kayla Lane, the waitress who inspired it all.
Of course, Lane and her colleagues aren’t the only ones benefitting from this fund. Riddle says that giving back in this way is helping her cope with her grief as well.
“Every day since Glory passed away, I feel a need to do something good and help other people and give her life meaning,” she says. “I don’t know why this happened. I don’t know why we only had her such a short time. But being able to help other people, it makes it a little easier. And it helps my grieving process to not just focus on my own problems but to remember that other people are going through things as well. I don’t know if that is the grand design or how it was meant to be, but it makes you think about how precious life is, and I feel an urge to do whatever I can to keep her memory alive.”
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