VinceZeb
Mar 8th, 2004, 08:07 AM
http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html
NOW .. FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO OPPOSE A REPEAL OF THE DEATH TAX
This obituary appeared on Saturday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I'm going to reprint it in full because I know some of you won't follow the link ... and I want to make sure you read it. Read how a man with no running water ... a man who grows sweet potatoes and tomatoes and then sells them in the town square ... read how this man is suddenly hit with a half-million dollar death tax bill when his brother dies. Yeah ... only the evil, nasty, wretched rich pay death taxes, right?
OBITUARIES: MARIETTA
J.C. HYDE, wanted no wealth, but farm. [Derrick Henry - Staff Saturday, March 6, 2004]
J.C. Hyde was an unassuming farmer, land-rich but cash-poor. For virtually his entire life, he plowed by mule on his 127-acre farm along the Chattahoochee River in east Cobb County, land he had lived on since his father bought it in 1920. Surrounded by pricey subdivisions, it had become one of the largest tracts of undeveloped land in metro Atlanta..
The land survived the boll weevil and the Great Depression. Mr. Hyde intended to make sure it would survive developers.
"I remember being there when a real estate developer drove up, as many did, and said: 'J.C. Hyde, I can make you a wealthy man,' " said Rand Wentworth, head of the Atlanta office of the Trust for Public Land from 1990 to 2002. "J.C. answered : 'But then I would not be happy.' "
Mr. Hyde was plenty happy to live the way he did, in the log house he grew up in, with heat from a pot-bellied stove and water from a well.
"I have running water," he joked in a 1991 Atlanta Journal-Constitution article. "I run out to the well and get it."
Working beside his brother, William "Buck" Hyde, he grew sweet potatoes, corn, okra, green beans, peas and tomatoes, selling them from the back of a pickup truck near Marietta Square. In 1996, Mr. Hyde was selling a bushel of his "Gold Nugget" sweet potatoes --- Grade 1 --- for $16.
After a long day's work, he might pick up his fiddle and play some music.
Mr. Hyde was a bachelor, not given to idle talk. "I remember picking sweet potatoes with him for six hours and during that period he never said more than four words," said Kevin Johnson of Atlanta, Chattahoochee River Program coordinator with the Trust for Public Land.
He lived with his brother, also unmarried. While the men tended the fields, their four married sisters took turns cooking and helping with the domestic chores, said Mr. Wentworth.
When Mr. Hyde's brother died in 1987 and left him his share of the farm, the IRS and state revenue collectors arrived. They assessed Mr. Hyde with a debt of $467,000 to the IRS and $96,000 to the state for estate taxes.
"This is all something new to me," Mr. Hyde said in a Journal-Constitution story in 1991. "I never owed anybody nothing."
The private, nonprofit Trust for Public Land worked out a deal in 1992 with the National Park Service to buy 40 acres of riverfront property from Mr. Hyde for $1 million, more than enough to pay the taxes. The deeded land would become part of the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area, safe from developers. Mr. Hyde, meanwhile, could continue living and working there.
J.C. Hyde, 94, of Marietta died Wednesday. The funeral is 2 p.m. today at Roswell Funeral Home.
"I have never met a better conservationist than J.C. Hyde," said Mr. Wentworth, now president of the Land Trust Alliance in Washington, a national umbrella of conservation organizations. "He cared for that land like it was family, like it was part of his body. When he feared he might have to sell part of it, he said, with tears in his eyes, 'Losing part of this land would be like cutting off my arm.' "
The future of the nearly 90 acres not owned by the National Park Service remains to be determined, said Mr. Wentworth. "The challenge now is that the land could be lost to subdivisions."
Survivors include three sisters, Rosa Lee Stroup of Atlanta, M. Maglee Mitchell of Mableton and Gladys A. Holcomb of Marietta.
I'm sure glad that the death tax was there to take away a Jag and a new houseboat from this evil capitalist!
NOW .. FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO OPPOSE A REPEAL OF THE DEATH TAX
This obituary appeared on Saturday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I'm going to reprint it in full because I know some of you won't follow the link ... and I want to make sure you read it. Read how a man with no running water ... a man who grows sweet potatoes and tomatoes and then sells them in the town square ... read how this man is suddenly hit with a half-million dollar death tax bill when his brother dies. Yeah ... only the evil, nasty, wretched rich pay death taxes, right?
OBITUARIES: MARIETTA
J.C. HYDE, wanted no wealth, but farm. [Derrick Henry - Staff Saturday, March 6, 2004]
J.C. Hyde was an unassuming farmer, land-rich but cash-poor. For virtually his entire life, he plowed by mule on his 127-acre farm along the Chattahoochee River in east Cobb County, land he had lived on since his father bought it in 1920. Surrounded by pricey subdivisions, it had become one of the largest tracts of undeveloped land in metro Atlanta..
The land survived the boll weevil and the Great Depression. Mr. Hyde intended to make sure it would survive developers.
"I remember being there when a real estate developer drove up, as many did, and said: 'J.C. Hyde, I can make you a wealthy man,' " said Rand Wentworth, head of the Atlanta office of the Trust for Public Land from 1990 to 2002. "J.C. answered : 'But then I would not be happy.' "
Mr. Hyde was plenty happy to live the way he did, in the log house he grew up in, with heat from a pot-bellied stove and water from a well.
"I have running water," he joked in a 1991 Atlanta Journal-Constitution article. "I run out to the well and get it."
Working beside his brother, William "Buck" Hyde, he grew sweet potatoes, corn, okra, green beans, peas and tomatoes, selling them from the back of a pickup truck near Marietta Square. In 1996, Mr. Hyde was selling a bushel of his "Gold Nugget" sweet potatoes --- Grade 1 --- for $16.
After a long day's work, he might pick up his fiddle and play some music.
Mr. Hyde was a bachelor, not given to idle talk. "I remember picking sweet potatoes with him for six hours and during that period he never said more than four words," said Kevin Johnson of Atlanta, Chattahoochee River Program coordinator with the Trust for Public Land.
He lived with his brother, also unmarried. While the men tended the fields, their four married sisters took turns cooking and helping with the domestic chores, said Mr. Wentworth.
When Mr. Hyde's brother died in 1987 and left him his share of the farm, the IRS and state revenue collectors arrived. They assessed Mr. Hyde with a debt of $467,000 to the IRS and $96,000 to the state for estate taxes.
"This is all something new to me," Mr. Hyde said in a Journal-Constitution story in 1991. "I never owed anybody nothing."
The private, nonprofit Trust for Public Land worked out a deal in 1992 with the National Park Service to buy 40 acres of riverfront property from Mr. Hyde for $1 million, more than enough to pay the taxes. The deeded land would become part of the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area, safe from developers. Mr. Hyde, meanwhile, could continue living and working there.
J.C. Hyde, 94, of Marietta died Wednesday. The funeral is 2 p.m. today at Roswell Funeral Home.
"I have never met a better conservationist than J.C. Hyde," said Mr. Wentworth, now president of the Land Trust Alliance in Washington, a national umbrella of conservation organizations. "He cared for that land like it was family, like it was part of his body. When he feared he might have to sell part of it, he said, with tears in his eyes, 'Losing part of this land would be like cutting off my arm.' "
The future of the nearly 90 acres not owned by the National Park Service remains to be determined, said Mr. Wentworth. "The challenge now is that the land could be lost to subdivisions."
Survivors include three sisters, Rosa Lee Stroup of Atlanta, M. Maglee Mitchell of Mableton and Gladys A. Holcomb of Marietta.
I'm sure glad that the death tax was there to take away a Jag and a new houseboat from this evil capitalist!