Kindness Kindles a Yule Blaze

--The kindness of strangers is making Christmas a crackling affair at Annabel Hill’s farm in Georgia. Less than a year ago, Hill’s husband, Lenard, believing that money from a life insurance policy would save the family farm, killed himself hours before the place was to be auctioned to settle a $300,000 debt. Appalled by the news of Hill’s death, developer Donald Trump and Atlanta businessman Frank Argenbright Jr. began a fund-raising drive to pay off the family’s debt, which now stood at $187,000. With the help of Tom McKamy, a sixth-generation Texas farmer who donated $39,000, they were able to clear the property and hand the 66-year-old widow the mortgage papers, which she promptly burned in a celebration on the 705-acre Waynesboro farm. “We have a real celebration, not only to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but also to celebrate the goodness in men’s hearts,” Hill said.

--Two students traveling 550 miles home to Montana for the holidays found it cheaper to take a taxi than to fly. Butch Nolan, 18, a freshman at the University of Utah, and Jason Jourdan, 19, attending flight school in Oregon, were fogbound at an airport in Salt Lake City when they decided to find another method of transportation home to Billings. Rental car companies wouldn’t deal with two teen-agers, so they decided to take the bus--a 17-hour trip. Then the taxi driver who took them from the airport to the bus station offered to drive them home. After some bargaining, the three settled on a $300 fare. “My parents were real surprised,” Nolan said. “At $150 apiece, it was cheaper than a plane ticket.”

--An anonymous Santa in Chattanooga, Tenn., quietly performed his good deeds for the third year in a row by appearing at the city’s Electric Power Board and paying the delinquent bills of two families. He wrote a $312 check this year to cover the $126 power bill of an ailing elderly couple and the $186 bill of a young unemployed couple with a baby. “He walked up and tapped on the glass by this credit department employee,” said power board Controller Jack Loveless. “He’s a very private sort of person. He said, ‘I’d like to do the same thing I’ve done the past two years.’ ”

--Former President Jimmy Carter, who broke his collarbone when cross-country skiing at Camp David in 1980, showed “incredible verve, tenacity and courage” in his first try at downhill skiing, said the operator of Taos Ski Valley. Carter, who spent a week vacationing in New Mexico with his family, skied from the top of the mountain on his second day of lessons--an extraordinary feat, said ski operator Ernie Blake.