Providing a Path to Success
Bryan Hansen (left), Joe Miltimore (center) and children Nathan and Bell.
Photo by Catherine Little Photography
Out of his four siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, Joe Miltimore (LAS ’81, MA ’84) was the first to go to college.
“My mom was a waitress, and my dad was a factory worker. With five children, they didn’t have a lot of money to help. But in those days, you were able to work weekends and summers and go through school without incurring a lot of student debt,” Joe says. He lived at home in rural Beach Park, Ill., commuted to DePaul, held mostly minimum-wage jobs and graduated with only $2,500 in student loans.
His spouse, Bryan Hansen, has a similar story. Although both of Bryan’s parents were college graduates, sending their two children to college was a struggle and involved sacrifice.
Joe’s DePaul education paved the way for his career success. At DePaul, he majored in economics and was drawn to classes about social aspects of the economy. As a commercial banker, he used that human perspective to work with family- and employee-owned businesses, successfully building the bank’s middle-market lending capability.
But today it’s a lot harder for students with fewer resources to make their way through college. Both Joe and Bryan want to help students who share their former circumstances graduate without a lot of debt, enabling them to save money, perhaps buy a house and begin building family wealth.
The couple recently made a blended gift to DePaul, endowing a scholarship now for first-generation students who are eligible for Pell grants, as well as making a bequest through their wills.
“It’s nice to have money, but if it’s not benefiting anybody, then what good is it?” Joe says. “The sooner you can help people, the sooner they’ll be better off. We want to help get that snowball rolling. If you could help somebody, why wouldn’t you? To us it just makes sense.”
Like Joe and Bryan, you can help DePaul students by making a planned gift. Learn how by contacting Richard S. Goode, JD at (312) 362-8605 or plannedgiving@depaul.edu.