Alabama town learns farmer secretly paid people’s pharmacy bills

Hody Childress donated $100 a month for neighbors who couldn’t pay their prescriptions until his recent death

A small town in Alabama is honoring a man who paid off his neighbors’ pharmacy bills for years and kept his generosity a secret until shortly before his recent death by picking up exactly where he left off.

Hody Childress, a farmer and US air force veteran, began his anonymous charitable campaign when he walked into a drug store in his home town of Geraldine in 2012 and learned from the owner that sometimes families can’t afford to pay for their medicines.