Pete Hanna, a fixture of Hanna Steel for more than 60 years, died Sunday. He was 88.
Well-known in business and philanthropy, Hanna was involved in the RISE Center at The University of Alabama, and the Pete Hanna Center and Pete Hanna Football Stadium at Samford where he was a member of the university Board of Trustees.
But he is best known for his work with Hanna Steel Corp., based in Hoover, with facilities in Fairfield, Tuscaloosa and Illinois, as well as its trucking line.
According to his obituary, Hanna was a starter on the 1953 Ramsay High School state championship football team, and a 1960 graduate of the University of Alabama’s College of Commerce and Business Administration.
Hanna was the son of Walter J. ‘Crack’ Hanna, who was head of the Alabama National Guard when martial law was ordered in 1954 to clean up corruption in Phenix City. Pete Hanna, then a private first class with the guard, served at his father’s side.
Pete Hanna spent 14 years with the Alabama Army National Guard.
According to the company history, Hanna bought his first batch of Hanna Steel stock from his father in 1962, with an $80,000 loan he got from what was then SouthTrust Bank.
He also took on the company’s operational and personnel matters and pushed to make the company’s transportation in-house with a trucking line.
“It was my dream for my employees to have the best car and the best house on their street. Period,” he said in a 1999 interview with the Birmingham News.
In 1984, he assumed the company leadership, overseeing the opening of its Tuscaloosa tubing facility and other expansion.
