Uniontown man raises over $57K for new liver thanks to Facebook group that mocks baby boomers

Gary Rider of Uniontown needed a liver transplant. But he couldn’t afford the medical bills.

So he did what many people in similar situations do and started a GoFundMe page. He also started selling his possessions, one of which was an air compressor.

He put an ad up for the air compressor on Facebook Marketplace, with the text “Older air compressor, working as it should.i need a liver transplant.procedes go twords it Gary,” misspellings and all.

The ad got the attention of a Facebook group called “a car club where everyone acts like boomers”.

As the title suggests, it’s made up of car enthusiasts who take great joy making fun of baby boomers. They type their posts in all caps, engage in frequent misspellings (“gobbless” instead of “god bless”) and “old-timer” attitudes towards car culture. There’s also a lot of complaints about “commies”.

But Rider’s garbled Facebook post didn’t inspire mockery. Instead the members of the group started donating to Rider’s GoFundMe.

Initially, the GoFundMe had only raised about $175. Within a short amount of time, it had reached its $50,000 goal and sailed beyond. As of lunchtime Monday the fundraising drive had raised more than $57,600, with people still donating (and leaving messages in all caps that say “GOBBLESS”).

“People came together and did something out of the kindness of their hearts for somebody they don’t even know,” Patrick Thompson, one of the group’s members, told the car-focused news site Jalopik. “It’s amazing. There’s a lot of good people out there.”

Group members have also been uploading photos and videos of their own air compressors as a show of support.

Rider’s daughter, Adriana Redshaw, posted to the group last week thanking them for their kind support. “You don’t know how much this means to me and my siblings that our dad has so many people behind him in the time of his life,” she wrote.

For his part, Rider, who was planning on selling his home to pay for the transplant, said he doesn’t mind the boomer jokes.

“There’s nothing wrong with some silliness here and there, and I also see that there’s a lot of love there,” Rider said to Jalopik. “I mean, for somebody that doesn’t even know me. I’ve sold that air compressor probably 400 times. … it’s blown my mind completely as to how much the people are helping me.”