The Rev. Bill Hay, a pastor in Homewood for 45 years, was also a Bible smuggler and missionary to South America and Soviet Eastern Europe who once traveled to Communist Romania with money sewn into his clothes to support the Christian community there, his family recalled.

Hay was pastor of Edgewood Presbyterian Church in Homewood from 1966-1978, co-founded the Birmingham Theological Seminary at Edgewood in 1972 and then founded Covenant Presbyterian Church on Lakeshore Parkway in 1978, where he retired in 2011 after 33 years as pastor.