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If you grew up in Penn's Woods, Highland Meadows, Manns-Conroy, Golfview or any of the other suburban housing plans that sprung up around McKeesport in the 1950s and '60s --- or if you live in one of those houses now --- tomorrow is your chance to say "thank you."

All of those neighborhoods were developed with help from the city's Wilson Baum Agency, which on Saturday will celebrate its 75th anniversary with a barbecue, open house and live remote broadcast of Jack Etzel's handyman show.

Even if you didn't grow up in a house from Wilson Baum, you're invited, too, to celebrate with what used to be called "The Baum Squad" in advertisements.

A former Wilson Baum Agency employee came up with that slogan decades ago, says Robert W. Baum, who now runs the agency his father founded in 1933. "She said I should have paid her royalties," he says with a laugh.

. . .

Wilson Baum wasn't just involved in housing development, of course. Bob Baum estimates that the elder Baum also approved more than $105 million in mortgages for McKeesporters over the years.

Since many of the mortgages were tiny by today's standards --- houses valued at less than $5,000, with monthly payments of $15 or $20 --- an awful lot of Mon Valley families must have purchased their first home with the help of a loan arranged by Wilson Baum.

"I can remember a big mortgage payment being $130 --- wow!" jokes Bob Baum, who is celebrating his own 50th anniversary in real estate this year. "You wondered how they could afford it."

These days, about two dozen employees, based in the agency's offices at the corner of Walnut Street and Long Run Road, handle more than 300 home sales per year and millions of dollars in residential, personal and commercial insurance for people throughout the Mon Valley.

And they still broker home financing, too, through a division called Abby Mortgage Inc. (It's named for Bob Baum's seven-year-old long-haired dachshund, who accompanies him to the office.)

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Wilson Baum is also a franchise (they prefer the term "branch-ise") of Pittsburgh's Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, which is now the seventh-largest real estate brokerage in the United States. That gives the McKeesport agency national reach.

"There was a time that I didn't want to sell a house more than three miles away," Baum says. "Now, I'll list a house in Erie."

That's pretty tall cotton for an agency that was started almost by accident in 1933, when Wilson W. Baum was working for Montgomery Ward & Co. in Butler, and living with his father, a Methodist minister, in a church parsonage.

Wilson Baum's brother Herb was the McKeesport representative of a Harrisburg-based savings and loan. When he was transferred to the Pittsburgh office, Herb Baum was asked to recommend a replacement. He suggested his brother.

So Wilson Baum rented a tiny office on the second floor of 520 Locust St., Downtown, to collect deposits and arrange mortgages for the State Capital Savings & Loan Association.

. . .

Bob Baum doesn't know why his father branched into selling houses. But it was the Depression, and the state didn't require real estate agents to have a license then. One suspects that Wilson Baum first got into real estate to help sell the houses of mortgage customers who couldn't meet their payments.

In fact, during the dark days of the 1930s, Wilson Baum sometimes made payments on his customers' houses to keep them out of foreclosure. Bob Baum has found a ledger several inches thick recording payments that his father made on behalf of struggling homeowners --- including some prominent local families.

"He and my mother used to save 35 cents so that they could afford to go to the movies every two weeks," Bob Baum says. "That was their entertainment."

State Capital required Baum's mortgage customers to obtain fire insurance, so he started offering that, too. From there, Wilson Baum Agency kept growing, acquiring four other McKeesport real estate companies and opening branch offices in Greensburg, New Kensington and North Huntingdon. (The last of the branch offices was sold a few years ago.)

Despite that, Wilson W. Baum never wanted to own any real estate or stocks of his own. "Everything he saved, he saved in a passbook savings account," Bob Baum says, and when State Capital Savings was swallowed by several larger savings and loans, his father was distressed.

The elder Baum died at age 74 in 1985, so he didn't live to see the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, which pushed the company that had bought State Capital Savings into federal receivership.

"He lived and breathed State Capital," Bob Baum says. "He often said he didn't like the mergers, and if knew what happened, he'd be flipping over in his grave."

. . .

These days, Wilson Baum Agency remains successful despite operating in a real estate market that's more challenging than the one Baum's father faced during the Depression.

Many Mon Valley neighborhoods are filled with pre-World War II houses that have deteriorated or been abandoned, driving down property values. (Baum Agency pays its agents an above-average commission on sales to compensate for the lower housing prices.)

And Bob Baum says the most difficult thing about selling houses in the Mon Valley remains the perception that the communities aren't desirable.

"Our town is not as unsafe as people think it is," he says. "Do we have some problems? Yes. I'm not going to whitewash them."

But Baum, who sits on the board of the McKeesport Trail Commission and the McKeesport YMCA, says the city and the McKeesport Area School District are much better than many people assume.

The school district is "ranked third in the state for the range of programs that they offer, from college prep to vocational training," Baum says. "If the perception of the schools was better, that would make my job easier."

Some more cosmetic improvements would help, he says. The city needs to continue to clean up blighted properties --- the Jenny Lind, Soles, and Bailie street corridors are particularly tough to sell, Baum says --- and especially improve the main entrances to McKeesport.

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Otherwise, Wilson Baum Agency has the same focus that its founder had 75 years ago: Face to face, personal attention.

Bob Baum says roughly 30 to 40 percent of the company's insurance business is done by walk-in clients, many of them older residents. "They want to see you eye to eye," he says. "People can find my products anywhere. If people come here based on my price, they'll leave us based on price. I'm selling service."

Howard Hanna's trademark green now graces Wilson Baum Agency, both inside and out. But Wilson Baum Agency's office also displays the picture of an old-fashioned gaslight that has been the smaller company's trademark for decades.

The gaslight was Bob Baum's idea.

"I thought the lamp represented warmth, or a homey touch," he says. "To me, what that lamp means is the lamp of service."

And they've kept it glowing in McKeesport for 75 years and counting.

. . .

If You Go: Wilson Baum Agency will hold a barbecue and open house from 12 noon to 4 p.m. Saturday. A 32-inch color TV and other door prizes will be given away.

Jack Etzel, host of a handyman show on McKeesport-licensed WPTT (1360), will broadcast live between 12:30 and 1:30 p.m. (Incidentally, the Wilson Baum Agency building also housed radio station 1360 from 1969 to 1974, when it was known as "WIXZ." If you ask nice, Bob Baum will show you the control room where Rush Limbaugh worked. Though it's now a conference room, it still looks like a radio studio.)

The agency is located at 314 Long Run Road, at the intersection of Walnut Street and Route 48. RSVPs are suggested; call (412) 751-2200, extension 130.