Born in Kansas City, Missouri, to William Hanna, Sr., and the former Irma Belle Adams, he came to Shreveport with his parents at the age of three months. He graduated in 1947 from C. E. Byrd High School in Shreveport and enrolled at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. There he became a lifelong Tigers partisan. He played on the LSU baseball team from 1949 to 1951. After graduation, he played shortstop on several minor league teams before he returned to Shreveport to join his father in the automobile business. \n', '

Hanna was a president of the Louisiana Automobile Dealers Association, which in 1977 named him the "Automobile Dealer of the Year". The company was well known for the popular sales slogan, "You Canna Ford a Hanna Ford," which was intended to attract moderate-income buyers. The company no longer exists. \n', '

Hanna was the first Shreveport mayor under the mayor-council home-rule city charter, which replaced the former commission city government. He was also the first mayor in decades not serving in public office at the time of his election. He recruited nationally and secured exceptional people to serve in municipal government. Many noted that Hanna did not seem really interested in "politics". Such an attitude made it appear that he did not like being mayor, and he did not run for a second term in 1982.\n', '

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