My name is Howard W. Hanna and I was born in February 1920. I had an ordinary childhood. However in 1934-1935, when I was old enough to go to Boy Scout camp, I could not afford to go.
Instead, my friends and I discovered that Camp Umbstetter (behind Sewickley) was closed due to the Depression but that the pool was kept open. We were able to sleep in empty barracks and cook our own food over an open fire. This was our version of Boy Scout camp.
Eventually, I got a job at the camp digging holes for the Works Progress Administration, a government works program created by Congress and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, building new outhouses. I was then paid $5 a week plus room and board. With the new outhouses, the camp reopened in 1936 and I had a good job every summer while in high school, thanks to the government's WPA program.
My parents and the high school principal insisted that I go to college, which I did from 1938 to 1942. To keep colleges from going broke, the Pennsylvania government allotted bond money for half scholarships to Pennsylvania schools -- $150 per year. This was the only way I could go to college, so I went to the University of Pittsburgh, which allowed me to get a job and live at home for free. Full tuition was $300 a year.
In 1942, I was drafted into the military. After serving several years in India as an American liaison officer with the British and Indian armies, I was discharged as a captain in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1946.
From 1946 to 1949, I got a master's degree in business from Pitt by attending night school. This was paid for by the Veteran's Administration and included books, pencils, etc. The VA also paid for three years of "on the job" training, which subsidized my job pay with $150 per month.
In 1950, and again thanks to the VA, I was able to buy my first home in Mt. Lebanon for $15,750, with nothing down. I parlayed the profit from the sale of this home into the downpayment on a house in Shadyside, as my wife was from Point Breeze and wanted to move closer to her family. Years later, we parlayed the profit from the sale of the Shadyside home into a condo in North Oakland, for which we paid cash -- all thanks to the original G.I. bill.
I probably paid back in taxes everything I had received from the government stimulus programs in one year in the 1950s. If the stimulus had not been possible, the company I founded in 1957 -- with more than 4,700 sales associates and staff today -- would not be in existence.
My two good friends from college went to Pitt same way. After WWII, one went to law school on the G.I. bill, then was on the White House staff and eventually became a prominent Washington attorney. The other owned over 50 lumberbyards in the Midwest.
This is why I like the federal stimulus program.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- President Obama signed an extension and expansion of the first-time homebuyers tax credit on Friday.
The $8,000 credit was scheduled to lapse on Dec. 1 but will now be in effect through the end of June. Homebuyers must sign a contract before April 30 and close by June 30. The income limits were also raised: Single buyers can now earn up to $125,000 and still get the full credit while a married couple can earn $225,000.
The bill also made more homeowners eligible to claim the credit on their taxes. First-time buyers -- those who have not owned a home in the past three years -- still qualify for an $8,000 rebate. But now people who want to trade up can also qualify. Those who have owned and occupied a residence for at least five years out of the past eight can claim a $6,500 tax credit if they close on a purchase by the end of June.
"The new version of the tax credit has the potential to stimulate the housing market even more than the old version due to the fact that more people will qualify under the new rules," said Gibran Nicholas, chairman of the CMPS Institute, an organization that certifies mortgage bankers and brokers.
Nicholas provided four scenarios illustrating how the tax credit rules for existing homebuyers will apply:
• Harry owned a home in 2001 and 2002 but sold it to relocate for a job. He would qualify for the $8,000 first-time-buyer credit because he has not owned a home in the past three years.
• Sue purchased a home in 2004 and has lived there since. If she decides to buy a new home, she would qualify for the $6,500 tax credit because she has lived in the same residence for five consecutive years in the past eight.
• Jane purchased her home in 2002, lived there for five consecutive years before she rented it out in 2007. She would qualify because she was an owner/occupier for at least five consecutive years in the past eight.
• Mark purchased a home in 2006 and lived there for the past three years. He would not qualify because he is neither a first-time homebuyer nor someone who lived in the same primary residence for five consecutive years out of the past eight.
Chautauqua County Homes
