Alabama Farmer’s Kind Deed Sparks Generosity

An Alabama man has been anonymously paying for his neighbors’ pharmacy bills for over 10 years. Hody Childress, a farmer and US air force veteran, had been keeping it a secret since 2012 when he walked into a drug store in his home town of Geraldine and learned from the owner, Brooke Walker, that sometimes families can’t afford to pay for their medicines.

Childress told Walker: “Here, this $100 is for anyone who can’t afford their prescription. Do not tell a soul that the money came from me. Tell them it’s a blessing from God.” A month later, Childress walked back into Geraldine Drugs. “Here’s another 100-dollar bill. Do not tell a soul that the money came from me. Tell them it’s a blessing from God,” Childress told Walker.

He gave thousands of dollars to a pharmacy over the years, where members of his own family regularly visited without ever knowing what he was doing. Late last year, Childress sensed that he was approaching the end of his life. He fought multiple health issues including COPD and was having trouble getting around. The 80-year-old needed someone to take his $100 bill to Geraldine Drugs, and he entrusted the task to his daughter, Tania Nix.

“I was shocked — I had no idea that he was helping people at the drug store” Nix said. “He told me he’d been carrying a $100 bill to the pharmacist in Geraldine on the first of each month and he didn’t want to know who she’d helped with it. He just wanted to bless people with it,” she said. Nix had helped her father but had no idea he had been doing this small kindness for over a decade.

Childress passed away on January 1, 2023 and only then did the extent of his kind deed become known. Pharmacist Brooke explained she had been sworn to secrecy, but she felt like the door was open now and that she could share what had been going on. Now that word has leaked out, family and friends in Geraldine are paying it forward, keeping Childress’s pharmacy fund going.

“There are so many people in Geraldine who have lived longer because of Hody, he was a true humble servant who will always be loved” pharmacist Heather Walker said. It turns out, Childress’s kindness is contagious. Geraldine Drugs has received a flood of donations—first from locals and then from people around the country—in his memory. With that money, the pharmacy has created a Hody Childress Fund, which will continue his legacy of helping out those in need.