NEWPORT, Ky. -- Bub Basham and his wife, Lois, love all things Greater Cincinnati. Their home is replete with Reds memorabilia, including rows of player bobbleheads and signed baseballs in protective cases, and Bub sports an NKU polo in his home hospital bed.
Naturally, they also love the area's staple food. The couple made a decades-long tradition of visiting Skyline Chili every Sunday after church with friends. They were regular enough customers that they got to know the staff at their closest location, including manager Brian Clifton.
The Bashams stopped showing up, however, after Bub was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and confined mostly to his bed.
"I'd given anything in the world to go back, but they told me I'd never be able to go back," he said. "It broke my heart."
So Skyline came to him. Clifton began delivering the Bashams' favorite dishes to their door alongside assurances that the couple had been missed at the restaurant.
Clifton wrote on Facebook that he didn't begin the deliveries "for notoriety or pats on the back." He did it because he wants his Skyline to be a place where the people who sit down to eat feel respected and cared about as more than customers.
"We do not chase our customers for a quick profit," he wrote. "We make them feel like they are Family and be treated as such. … The hugs. The smiles and mostly the feeling of you are at home when you can not be is the drive of our store."
Watch the video above to hear from Bub Bashman about how much the kind gesture means to him.
