Word: smith
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...should work if Congress were crafting a law that treated all people equally, let's consider the story of two homeowners in bankruptcy. One is James Villa, a 42-year-old onetime stockbroker who lives in a $1.4 million home in Boca Raton, Fla. The other is Allen Smith, a 73-year-old retired autoworker with throat cancer who lives in a deteriorating $80,000 home in Wilmington...
...contrast, 1,100 miles to the north, in Wilmington, Del., 73-year-old Allen Smith is about to lose his home in bankruptcy court. Smith was born in Birmingham, Ala., and served in the Coast Guard during World War II. After his discharge in 1945, he attended an auto-mechanics school in Detroit and then went to work as a metal finisher and body repairman for Chrysler. The company transferred him to its Delaware plant in 1959, where he worked until he was forced out after 35 years during one of the automaker's downsizings...
...Smith bought his modest home in Wilmington in 1964. In 1970, at age 44, he married. His wife Carolyn worked at a neighborhood florist. "I was living good, having a good time," Smith told TIME, "giving my wife everything she needed. Tried to make her happy...
...When Smith lost his job at Chrysler in 1982, he was too young to collect Social Security so he took a new job as a security guard. Two years later, his world began to unravel. "Everything just went bad at one time. It waited until I got retired. If I had been working, it would have been different, but I had retired before everything started to happen...
...Everything" began with his wife's diabetes. "She just lost her toe in 1984," he says. Then "they had to cut her leg. And they had to keep cutting it off." Finally, they amputated both legs. To accommodate her wheelchair, Smith built a ramp and made other renovations. To pay for it all and to keep up with the monthly payments on all his credit cards, he borrowed against his house, which had been paid off. "I had what they called triple-A credit," he says...