Thanks A Million

Guest: Jacqui Shine, Historian and Writer Some people called Percy Ross “America’s Rich Uncle.” He had a rags-to-riches story and spent more than a decade giving his money away in small increments to people who bothered to ask. He purchased a space heater for a family living in an unheated basement, paid a $300 light bill for a woman supporting her disabled brother, bought dance lessons for an elderly woman trying to impress her new beau. Percy Ross did all of this in public style through a newspaper column that ran for more than a decade in papers across the country until 1999 when he stopped writing because he said he’d given away the whole wad. Ross did have his critics who found his particular style of charity a bit too vulgar.