Good Samaritan Ministries receptionist Kay Collier recently recalled her brother, Sidney Carlton Hanks, and his love for riding his bicycle all over the town of Robinson, where they grew up.

“He was known as Sid on the Bike,” Collier said. “He wore out a bike, sometimes my mom would have to get him two a year. He would ride that bike everywhere. When he was 18 he did end up getting his driver’s license but he still rode a bike everywhere.”

Sidney’s love for bicycles began when he joined the Hanks family, who adopted him at the age of 6.

“There were four kids in the family, three girls, and my brother wanted a brother so we adopted him through Catholic Charities,” Collier said. “For his first Christmas at our house, my mother asked him what he wanted from Santa and he said it didn’t matter, he never gets what he wants, but he would really like to have a bike.”

En route to become a passionate bicycle rider, Sidney first had to overcome obstacles.

“He had some major handicap issues, one being one leg was 12 inches shorter than the other,” Collier said. “He had bad phlebitis in the short leg and then the other one was OK. At the time he lived with a foster mother at a group home they had booties made but no shoes. He couldn’t wear regular shoes because of the way his feet were formed. My mother found someone to get him some shoes made that were built up and very heavy, but he rode that bike anyway. My mother first got him one with training wheels and the training wheels were off the second day.”

At age 28, Sidney passed away.

“He had hip replacement surgery because of the shorter leg putting so much stress on the other leg,” Collier said. “He was just about in a wheelchair, and he died. It was a huge shock to all of us.”

Collier and her husband Craig were expecting their first daughter at the time of Sidney’s passing. Their 27-year-old daughter is also named Sidney.

Also during the past 27 years, in honor of Sidney Carlton Hanks, the Colliers have purchased and donated bikes to various non-profit charities for Christmas. The year, the Colliers have donated a dozen bikes to Good Samaritan Ministries, where a drawing will begin Dec. 16 to distribute bikes to families in need this holiday season.

“It’s been a lot of fun, and we get to think about him. It’s in his honor and we absolutely love doing it,” Collier said. “It depends every year how many we are able to get, but this year with our budget we were able to buy 12 bikes. We don’t know who the bikes go to, hopefully someone very deserving and they must be. I do it with a good heart and hope it goes to those less fortunate who really can’t get a bike because of the six years when we didn’t have him and he couldn’t get one.”

GSM Executive Director Leesa Stephens said of the Colliers’ donation, “Kay is very quiet about it. She never really tells anybody what’s she done and why she does it. A lot of us get those ideas, and if get something on your heart or mind, play that hunch, see where it goes, you never know how it may turn out.”

Stephens shared a couple of stories of recent Good Samaritan Ministries’ holiday bike drawings, and the impact they’ve had on local families.

Last year, “A boy named Jeremiah, he was about 4, and he kept telling his mother that Jesus was going give him a bicycle for Christmas,” Stephens said. “They drew his mother’s name out and she brought him down here to pick it out, and he said, “Jesus brought me my bicycle!”

Stephens’ favorite story took place four years ago.

“We were down to the last bicycle and it was a little girls bicycle,” Stephens said. “Our resale store manager called and when the lady answered the phone the lady said ‘tell me again the number you dialed’ and she quoted the number back to her and the lady on the other end of the phone began to cry. She said she was signing up her grandkids for toys at Toys for Kids, she was raising four grandchildren by herself, and she got violently ill and they had to come pick her up in an ambulance and she had to spend several days in the hospital. She did not get to sign her youngest grandchild up for toys and she’d been really worried since then that she wasn’t going to have anything for Christmas. It turned out to be the exact right age and exact right size bicycle. We look back on that and we didn’t have anything to do with it, we’re just a pass through.”