Former Chilton County Commissioner Gerald “Buck” Cost died Tuesday morning.

Cost served two terms on the commission, from 1983-87, and then a second term beginning in 1993.

Heedy Hayes, who served on the commission with Cost and also attended school at Jemison with him in the 1950s, remembers fondly a story about Cost, when a federal judge was ordering the county to build a new jail in the 1990s.

“He asked each commissioner the same question: ‘Have you ever been in that jail?’” Hayes said. “Buck says, ‘Yes, your honor. Both ways.’ That was the only laugh we got out of the judge.”

Cost worked in construction most of his life.

Visitation will be held from 5-8 p.m. Wednesday at Ellison-Cleckler Funeral Home. The funeral will be at 2 p.m. Thursday at the Ellison-Cleckler memorial chapel. Burial will follow at New Hope Baptist Church cemetery in Jemison.