An Army of Normal Folks - Secretly Paying for the Prescriptions of Strangers

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

For Shop Talk, we honor the story of Hody Childress, an Alabama farmer whose secret generosity came to light after his death. Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, everybody. It's Bill Courtney from an army of normal folks. Welcome into the shop. Yay. That was the most aggressive one you've done to date. It might have been. I was, uh... What's going on in your life that has you so worked up? I'm losing my mind. Basically, I'm building... Lisa and I are redoing our house. I'm building a 35,000 square foot building out here. I'm dealing... Yeah, your lumber company. Yeah, my lumber company. I'm dealing with... With a trade. Are the prices down right now?

I thought I heard a... Price are terrible. Yeah, I heard somebody mentioned that on the news this week. Well, here's the thing. When you can't do business in about 59 different countries because there's 17,000 trade wars going on everywhere, it tends to repress your pricing. The two of the major suppliers, like I said,

they're withholding too, some of their supply to help the pricing. Yeah, well, good luck. How long can you do that? We'll see. But anyway, so we got trade wars going on. Lisa's decided that our house needed to be redone and so I live in a construction zone at work

I live in a construction zone at home coaching football doing this podcast have a job, have four kids spread out of the world and I'm just going crazy but you know what you know what? Football season baby it's full on all that's it

that's right so shop talk today from it's Keith Ball I think it's Bach okay we're going to call him yet but feel Yeah, it's spelled B-A-U-C-H. So we're going to call it Keith Balk, maybe Bautch, but I don't want to, I don't want to... He'll be all right. He actually was inspired by John Norman to start donating blood again.

Yeah, pretty cool. That's right. That's it. So here's what he says. Bill and Alex, our priest shared this story as a subject matter for his homily this morning. The story is titled, Alabama Man Secretly Help to Pay Strangers. prescriptions for years. I thought it would be interesting to share the story with you guys, possible topic for a shop talk,

though it may be another story to touch someone on how a normal foe can help close to home. After the break, we'll get to it. ShopTock number 71 on secretly paying for strangers prescriptions right after these brief messages from our general sponsors. I started trying to get pregnant about four years ago now. We're getting a little bit older, and it just kind of felt like the window could be closing. Bloomberg and IHeard podcast present.

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Well, I lost my job and my parakeet is missing. How is your day? But the real world is different. Managing life's challenges can be overwhelming. So, what do we do? We get support. The Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council have mental health resources available for you

at loveyourmindtay.org. That's loveyourmindtay.org. See how much further you can go when you take care of your mental health. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the shop. Kind of lonely. It's just you and me in here today. You think we'll get any customers?

You're so ridiculous. I don't know. You got 130 employees out there. Does that count? Yeah, but they're not in the shop. Because right here's where the shop is. Actually, the shop's getting legit. You're parking outside.

You now got it labeled visitor parking. Do you like it? Yeah, the shops getting legit. Paved, printed. There's going to be signs up too pretty soon. Alex's spot. It's legit. I guess we should put an Alex spot outside.

Legit shot. Okay, everybody, from, we're going to call him Keith Botch. I'm not sure, but Keith. Thank you for reaching out. Sorry, I don't know how to pronounce anything. But, hey, I will mess up a salala bowl or two every once in a while. Okay, here we go. This is an article from the BBC that's titled Alabama Man secretly helped pay strangers prescriptions for a year,

brought to us by Keith, brought to him by his priest. Isn't it interesting that the BBC, British publication, celebrating an Alabama man? I didn't even know BBC New Alabama existed, frankly, although there's a Birmingham, so they share that. True. That's true. Okay, here we go. A farmer in a small U.S. town kept an astounding secret from his family and friends. Then the truth emerged at his funeral, and the news has inspired the community.

The adage that charity begins at home has been enacted in the most uplifting way by the actions of just one man. Hodi Childress, love the name. Hodi Childress spent his whole life in Geraldine, Alabama, working as a farmer and an employee of the Lockheed Martin Space Facility nearby. To those who don't know, believe it or not, in Alabama, that's a huge engineering and space community centered around Huntsville. which I would have bet that this is nearby that. His family described him as a humble, god-loving man who had often sent handwritten get-well cards and share vegetables from his garden with neighbors.

But even his family did know one big secret. Every month for nearly a decade, Mr. Childress donated $100 to the local pharmacy for anyone who couldn't afford to pay for a prescription. Over the years, he gave nearly $12,000 to the community, but his generosity came with one condition. Don't tell anybody. Brooke Walker said she'd been the pharmacist at Geraldine's,

the town's drugstore, for nearly two years from Mr. Childress, who was a regular customer, asked her a question. He pulled me aside and said, do you ever have anybody that can't pay for their medication? I said, well, yeah, unfortunately, that happens a lot. She said, Mr. Childress handed her a folded bill and said, next time that happens, we use this. don't tell where it came from, and don't tell me who needed it.

Just say it's a blessing from the Lord. Ms. Walker later called Mr. Childress to tell him how much his generosity meant to the customer had helped. He thanked her and said she ended the call feeling blown away by his generosity. She thought it would be a one-time kindness. But the next month, he came in and did the same thing. It continued every single month for almost 10 years. I never saw it lasting this long, and he always said,

keep this between us eventually his daughter tanya nix had to be brought in on the secret after battling illness for years her father became unable to leave his home but one day asked for a favor he said i've been doing something for a while and i would like it continue doing this he said i want you to take a hundred dollar bill up to the drugstore at the first of the month as long as i'm alive the request didn't surprise her as an air force veteran a man of faith she said her father cared deeply for his community and country and always sought to help others in any way he could. Mr. Childress died on January 1 of 2023. He was 80. Miss Nick's initially had mixed emotions about sharing her father's secret but felt compelled to speak about his generosity at his funeral because it

showed the kind of man he really was. Afterwards, she said a staff member from the local high school approached her to say thank you. Her son had been prescribed an EpiPen, but the family struggled to afford the $600 cost for the life-saving shot of adrenaline. Mr. Children's generosity helped cover the expense. She said by dad could have possibly saved her son's life. News of her father's altruism quickly spread throughout the community and the media. After the story was reported in the Washington Post this week, Ms. Walker said her pharmacy began receiving calls from across the U.S. from people wanting

to help keep the fun going. Ms. Nick said, it can often seem to be. like the country is moving further apart, but her father's gesture has been a reminder of the importance of kindness and community. People do care. And there's hope out there, she said. Wow, what a great story. When did Keith send it? A couple weeks, actually speaking to which I mentioned. Is it an old story? That's what I'm trying to get it. Oh. I'm curious because that's awesome. And once again, it is a beautiful glaring example that you don't have to be part of any big five one C3, anything to make a difference.

You can see an area of need and fill it. January 20th, 2023. Oh, it's just right. Yeah. What a great story. That kind of makes me think that's something I could do. That's easy. Yeah.

It's just a hundred bucks. I mean, to a lot of people, 100 bucks is a bunch. To some people, 100 bucks a month is very doable. Or you could do $10 a month or $50 a month or whatever you can do. Do whatever you're going to. Some of you can do $1,000 a month. Or you can have an Army of Normal Folks chapter and make something like that part of your giving circle. Yeah, that's interesting, Bill.

Did you like my transition? I didn't even think about that. Why don't you talk about it? Okay, so the Giving Circle idea is where Army members get together and we do much more interesting philanthropy together than we can do on our own. So for an example, like if, say, Alex could afford to donate $100 a year for this kind of pharmacy benefit. together as a giving circle, we might be able to $10,000. You know what I mean? In Oxford, Mississippi, and make a much more.

If there's a chapter with 50 people and everybody gives 100, now you've got $5,000 and now you can really do something. Yeah. So hopefully soon enough will be embarking on such a thing. Don't make an excuse. You can do it right now with or without the giving circle. That's true, with or out. But it's something we could do.

Okay, everybody. Shop Talk number 71. find an area of need and fill it even if it's something as simple as this and you know you don't have to be part of some big organization to make an impacting lasting difference in people's lives and this story is so inspiring that it was brought to us by a listener brought to him by a priest and brought to the priest by BBC from a little bitty town in birmingham you never know what some little small gesture being just a normal person doing a easy kindness what what that will do for other people and what that gesture can inspire and here we are talking about them now what's interesting is you could say it's you know it's only 12 grand and yet it's gotten all this attention but it's just like so surprising and so creative and a normal person doing it that it really I mean it's We all love the story and we're all drawn to it.

So it's, yeah, it really is a great example of you don't need to do the biggest things in the world to make a big impact. No, and I think part of it also is he did it confidentially. I think that's really sweet. That is the epitome of a turkey person. That is the guy who wants to do something good and wants absolutely no recognition for it, doesn't even want to know who he helped, just wants to know that he helped. I love that part. Yeah. there is an interesting conversation about that though too if uh sometimes it's helpful to share it

because it encourage other people to do it too so there is a good debate on that but if you do share it you got to do with humility yeah but we can certainly say that his daughter allowed the story for that very recently so that's great all right everybody shot talk number 71 do what you can where you can actually Alan barnhart was a great example that for years he didn't want to tell anybody what he was doing that's true with giving away uh you know only making like 150 000 despite a billion dollar company and giving away half their profits like he literally built in to tell anyone except i think you know some people close to him for years yeah so you can go to our ale barnhart story if you want to hear about him like hey you got to talk about this so that other

people can learn from it it's true it's absolutely true uh that was a really cool interview okay everybody chat talk number 71 do what you can where you can it's never too late and um uh thank you mr botch or bach I'm so sorry about your name for bringing the story. Guys, write me any time. Give us ideas for Chop Talk. This is a beautiful example of interesting, inspiring stuff that you brought to us. Please, write at the same time. If you like this episode, rate it, review it, share it on social, join the army at normalfokes.

Our email was actually down for a few weeks, which is annoying. So if you sent us an email in like late August, resend it, just flagging that. Are you serious? Yeah. You and I talk about this. What kind of shop you running here? It's just all the transition stuff, which we still not announced and things got goofed up. All the transition stuff that's not announced yet.

Yeah. Well, we'll officially announce pretty soon. Yeah. All right, everybody. Shop Talk number 71. Thanks for joining us. Until next time, do what you can. We'll see you next week.

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We get support. The Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council have mental health resources available for you at loveyourmindtay.org. That's loveyourmindtay.org. See how much further you can go when you take care of your mental health. This is an IHeart podcast. Thank you.