Long-Term Members
Senior ANS members will be receiving distinctive lapel pins to celebrate significant milestones in their Society membership. The ANS appreciates the many members who continue their support of this organization year after year. These special pins, marking 25, 30, 40, and 50 years of continuous membership, will be mailed to the honorees as a 1999 New Year's gift.
Fifty Years: Mr. Tim J. Browder, Gold Hill, OR.
Forty Years: Prof. Henry C. Boren, Chapel Hill, NC; Mr. Bruce R. Brace, Ancaster, Canada; Mr. J. Eric Engstrom, Wichita, KS; Dr. George P. Galavaris, Athens, Greece; Mr. L. R. Davis McKinney Jr., Dallas, TX; Mr. John Perdios, Athens, Greece; and Mr. Joseph Paul Scheetz, Pittsburgh, PA.
Thirty Years: Mr. Stephen Album, Santa Rosa, CA; Mr. James R. Briggs, Redlands, CA; Ms. Anne S. Davidson, New York, NY; Mr. Arthur Roy Doumaux Jr., Charleston, WV; Mr. Warren K. Fischer, Jackson Heights, NY; Mr. Dennis Gill, Garden City, NY; Dr. Paul Jones Gill, Springfield, MO; Mrs. Cora Lee C. Gillilland, St. Augustine, FL; Mr. Lawrence S. Goldberg, Pacific Palisades, CA; Mr. David Goodman, Gingins, Switzerland; Dr. Richard Craig Kammerer, Basking Ridge, NJ; Prof. Fred S. Kleiner, Woodbridge, CT; Dr. Robert Allen LaRocca, Riverdale, NY; Mr. Leo Lieberman, Jackson Heights, NY; Mr. Donald J. Orth, Falls Church, VA; Mr. Donald G. Partrick, Islandia, NY; Mr. Julius Reiver, Wilmington, DE; Mrs. Franziska E. Shlosser, Pierrefonds, Quebec, Canada; Mr. Harvey Stack, New York, NY; Prof. Chester G. Starr, Ann Arbor, MI; Prof. Leandre Villaronga, Barcelona, Spain; Mr. Richard B. Witschonke, Palo Alto, CA; Mr. John D. Wright, St. Joseph, MI; and Mr. Michael R. Zagorin, Olympia, WA.
Twenty-five Years: Prof. Roger S. Bagnall, New York, NY; Dr. Michael L. Bates, Edgewater, NJ; Mr. Harlan J. Berk, Chicago, IL; Mr. Yannis S. Costopoulos, Athens, Greece; Mr. Robert E. Darley-Doran, Winchester, Great Britain; Mr. Frank E. Dougher, Pelham, NY; Dr. Thomas Drew-Bear, Lyon, France; Mr. Youssef Gaafar, Cairo, Egypt; Dr. Istvan Gedai, Budapest, Hungary; Dr. Murray Gell-Mann, Santa Fe, NM; Dr. Jean-Baptiste Giard, Paris, France; Mr. Reed Hawn, Austin, TX; Mr. Steven S. Hoth, Burlington, IA; Dr. John P. C. Kent, London, Great Britain; Dr. Ryszard Kiersnowski, Warsaw, Poland; Mr. Roger deWardt Lane, Hollywood, FL; Dr. Benito J. Legarda Jr., San Juan, Metro Manila,; Philippines; Mr. James A. Lock, Parma, OH; Mr. Raymond N. Merena, Wolfeboro, NH; Dr. Bucur Mitrea, Bucharest, Romania; Col. William Bain Murray, San Antonio, TX; Mr. Andreas G. Pitsillides, Nicosia, Cyprus; Dr. Dimitris G. Portolos, Athens, Greece; Mr. Steven R. Schor, Lighthouse Point, FL; Mr. Bernhard Schulte, Basel, Switzerland; Mr. Klaus K. Selinheimo, Helsinki, Finland; and Dr. Attilio Stazio, Naples, Italy.
A Visit to the Middle West
ANS Executive Director Leslie A. Elam stopped off in Iola, WI, while on vacation in September. In Iola he visited with Krause Publications President, Cliff Mishler, on the left. Mishler joined the Society's Council last year, and assisted the Society in the publication of the recent memorial volume, Harry W. Bass, Jr. Memories of His Life. Elam also visited with Krause employee George Cuhaj, on the right. Cuhaj was employed at the Society during the beginning of the transition to computerization in the 1980s. Behind the group is Cuhaj's prized Checker Marathon.
New Members Welcomed
At its meeting on October 24, the Society's Council elected 33 Associates, either as new or reinstated members of the ANS. Newly elected Associates are:
Bruce H. Axler, New York, NY
Kevin E. Barry, Brick, NJ
Alan Belkin, Livingston, NJ
Donald W. Charters, Wayne, MI
James P. Chew, Jeannette, PA
Donald H. Dool, Crystal Lake, IL
Ed Dotts Jr., West Columbia, SC
Ronald R. Drzewucki Jr., St. Louis, MO
Charles D. Everett, Norwood, MA
John Fariss, South Boston, VA
Chris Hoelzle, Laguna Niguel, CA
Khondaker G. A. Islam, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Robert Kevorkian, Simsbury, CT
Nicholas V. Kuzmin, Bronx, NY
Stephen J. Lloyd, New York, NY
J. P. Martin, Colorado Springs, CO
James F. Martin, Gresham, OR
Jane McAdam-Freud, London, England
William Nogosek, Brooklyn, NY
Evgeni I. Paunov, Sofia, Bulgaria
Mark A. Regan, Reston, VA
W. Noah Reynolds, Raleigh, NC
William Rudman, Belmont, MA
Gene Sherman, Palos Verdes Estates, CA
David W. Showers, Davis, CA
Christopher Smith, Didcot, England
Erich Waeckerlin, Ottobrunn, Germany
Lance L. Ward Sr., Fort Worth, TX
Mark Webb, Vannuys, CA
Roy West, Philadelphia, PA
Reinstatements
Three previous members were welcomed back as ANS Associates:
Lucien L. Birkler, Arlington, VA
Robert Constantine Newman, Lexington, MA
W. David Perkins, Littleton, CO
New Life Members
The Society continues to promote the opportunity for members to convert to Life Membership by the one-time payment of $1,000. Life Associates and Life Fellows are excused from annual dues and are insured against any increase in member dues. At its October meeting, the Council recorded the following conversions to ANS Life Membership:
Dorothy Budd Bartle, Caldwell, NJ (Assoc. 1983, Fellow 1991)
Ronald R. Drzewucki, St. Louis, MO (Assoc. 1998)
Alexander B. Simonetta, Temple, TX (Assoc. 1989)
Mark Webb, Vannuys, CA (Assoc. 1998)
We welcome all these new members.
Associate membership in the ANS is open to all with an interest in numismatics. Members receive a range of benefits including the Society's annual journal, American Journal of Numismatics, and are informed about forthcoming events and opportunities through the quarterly ANSNewsletter and special mailings. Since 1997 members also have the opportunity to receive a free subscription to the Colonial Newsletter, a journal devoted to the numismatic history of the United States in the pre-Federal period, which was donated to the ANS by the CNL Foundation in 1997. Three issues of CNL appear each year.
Members are eligible to receive a unique benefit during 1999. By joining an ANS Circle in 1999 (Bronze, Silver, Electrum, or Gold) ANS members will receive a distinctive ANS Umbrella, decorated with the Society's logo, a gift sure to brighten up a rainy day!
George Wyper Elected Fellow
George U. Wyper, President of Wyper Capital Management, L.P., was elected a Fellow of the Society at the October 24 Council Meeting and subsequently was elected a member of the Council filling an unexpired term (see related story).
Alumni in the News:
Robert A. Hadley(1962) died May 12, 1998 at the age of 61. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1964, and taught history of the ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome at George Washington University. An obituary by Eugene N. Borza appears in the September 1998 issue of the Association of Ancient Historians Newsletter.
Public Office in Early Rome: Ritual Procedure and Political Practice by Roberta Stewart (1991) has been published by the University of Michigan Press.
Patricia (Langer) Dintrone (1979)is Secretary-Treasurer of the Association of Ancient Historians.
MEMBERSHIP RENEWAL
Membership renewals are going out at the end of December and we hope that our members will renew early in 1999. We encourage all our members to urge their coin collecting friends to consider membership in the Society. Our newsletter, our special events, and our lectures make membership worthwhile. The opportunity to have a publication subscription is invaluable to serious collectors and students of numismatics. Members also have the opportunity to receive a free subscription to the Colonial Newsletter, a journal devoted to the numismatic history of the United States during the pre-federal period.
In 1999 all members joining a circle will receive a fine umbrella carrying the ANS logo. All members joining the silver, electrum and gold circles will be invited to a special lecture given by a renowned numismatist in mid-town Manhattan.
The Society is planning for many new activities in our new home. There will be a gift shop, a book store, lunch time lectures, and new exhibits. We will be sponsoring educational days in cities across the United States. We look forward to a growth in membership as we move to toward the new millennium.
Robert H. Schonwalter
Robert H. Schonwalter was born around 1913. His family's business, I. Schonwalter & Co. of Elizabeth, NJ, traded internationally in fats and oils and manufactured soap. During World War II he served in the Navy in the Pacific theater and rejoined the family business on his return.
Schonwalter once observed to another collector of ancients, "We all started with U.S. coins." That particular collector raised a quizzical eyebrow, for he had collected Roman Republican denarii from his earliest youth. Schonwalter collected half cents. When we first met in 1990, he said, "I bet you don't even know that there were half cents!" I was fully confident that no coin of that denomination ever existed, but he seemed a pleasant enough old duffer, so I kept my mouth shut and did not contradict him. I then went into the vault, looked in the U.S. cabinet, and was surprised to find a whole tray of half cents. As I progressed in my numismatic career, Schonwalter took great pride in this story, and would often say, "When I first met John, he did not even know what a half cent was!" This was quite true.
Schonwalter often showed the extraordinary half cents he had been able to acquire in the 1950s from dealers of the time such as Charles "Suitcase" Foster. He assisted with Breen's attempts in the 1950s to recatalogue the half cents, but lost contact with Breen in the 1960s.
Most of us knew Schonwalter chiefly as a collector of ancients, especially Greek coins. He took particular pride in displaying his overstruck coin which enabled Ulla Westermark to sort out the chronology of the coins of Sicily and Magna Graecia. He could be very sly. One night at the Bronx Coin Club he displayed a Greek coin, and said, "Margaret Thompson attributed it to [some Greek island]. I must show it to Carmen Arnold-Biucchi, and not tell her what Margaret said, and see if she will say the same."
He would also collect all coins with a Judaic connection. I remember seeing his Judaea Capta sestertii, collected by die variety. His collection included Frankfurt "Judenpfennigs" and Tierra del Fuego private gold coins issued by Julius Popper, a Jewish engineer. Schonwalter was a true polymath.
Schonwalter was a member of numerous numismatic organizations including the American Numismatic Association which he joined in January 1950 becoming member 18054. His interest at that time was given as "U.S. Coins." His proposers were Charles Wormser and David Bullowa, the two principals of the New Netherlands coin firm.
In November 1952 he inquired about membership in the American Numismatic Society and became a member in January 1953. He gave his interests as ancient coins, U.S. half cents, tokens, and medals, but he was always eclectic and in June of that year he bought a copy of Early Chinese Coinage by Wang Yu-chu'an. In 1976 he was elected a fellow of the ANS and the letter written to him by the secretary of the Society, although partly a formal announcement, betrays great warmth and friendship. His coin donations to the Society reflect his eclectic interests--Islamic, Byzantine, Roman, Greek, and U.S.--and some of his outstanding donations included half cents of 1793 and 1856. Well into his eighties Schonwalter would walk across the George Washington Bridge every Saturday morning from his home in Fort Lee to use the library of the Society.
Schonwalter applied to join the New York Numismatic Club in February 1969 and was elected in April. His proposers were Joseph Sternberg, a collector of ancient coins and president of the New Jersey Numismatic Society who lived in Newark, and Willard C. Blaisdell, the owner of Bludworth Marine, who put together a very fine collection of large cents. Schonwalter served for many years as the chairman of the membership committee of the New York Numismatic Club. His memberships included the Northern Valley Coin Club, the New Jersey Numismatic Society, the Ancient Coin Society of New York, Early American Coppers, Inc., the Westchester Israel Numismatic Society (WINS), and the American-Israel Numismatic Association (AINA).
The organization in which he rose to highest rank was the Bronx Coin Club, whose francophone members called him "Gualtier le Beau, Président à Vie." Schonwalter objected to this title because presidents for life usually come to a sticky end, but just as the minister of defense is often the strong man in a Latin American government, Schonwalter was the strong man of the Bronx Coin Club. He had coins on every imaginable topic: one highlight was the month when the topic was the letter D, and he brought his dekadrachm.
Schonwalter knew a great deal about coinage but published rarely when he had something which only he could contribute. His articles include: "Numismatic Evidence from the Dead Sea" in the March 1958 Numismatist; "Some Jewish Community Tokens" in the Shekel, December 1976; and "The Plain over Reeded Edge Half Cent," in Penny-Whimsy, November 1985. All three articles are tightly argued, often making use of literature in several languages. In the first article he corrected a misattribution of the coins of Bar Kokhba; in the second he published hitherto unknown tokens from his own collection. In the third he took issue with Richard Picker and Walter Breen on the origin of edge reeding on the proof half cents of 1840 and 1841. Schonwalter's explanation was simple and convincing. Early in 1840, the Mint reduced the diameter of the half eagle from 22.5 mm to 21.6 mm. This left the Mint with a 22.5 mm collar for which it had no use. When the time came to mint the half cents that year, the Mint needed a 23 mm collar. The excess 22.5 mm reeded edge half eagle collar was reamed to 23 mm for the half cents. This left the collar with a faint trace of the half eagle reeding.
John M. Kleeberg
George Wyper Elected to Council
George U. Wyper, President of Wyper Capital Management, L.P., and formerly Senior Managing Director of Warburg Pincus Counsellors, Inc., was elected a member of the Society's governing Council at its meeting on October 24. Mr. Wyper will complete the unexpired term (Class of 2000) occasioned by the death of Allen F. Lovejoy in 1997. Mr. Wyper, who joined the Society earlier this year, was elected a Fellow at the October 24 meeting.