Some words about my Mom, who just passed away.
Dog97
Posts: 7,874 ✭✭✭
I am an only child and my mother & I were really close. Since I was 5 years old, she raised me all by herself & also helped me raise my girl. My wife left us 2 years ago so my family was just me, my girl, and Moma who lived on the creek about 20 miles away.
Mom & her mother got me started collecting when I was 6 when they gave me 12 circ silver dollars; 10 Peace & 2 Morgans. I still have those 12 silver dollars and have been a Morgan collector every since. We did the Whitman folder thing looking through pocket change too. My grandmother was the cashier at the power company and let me root through her cash register back in the 60’s & early 70’s.
When Mom’s 2nd husband died she was an old widow lady then so I took care of her. Every year around Christmas time she would ask me “What do you want for Christmas boy?” I’d say, “Well I saw some coins I wouldn’t mind getting.” So she’d give me some cash and tell me to get what I wanted & call it my Christmas present. I would buy a coin I’d seen on eBay or on some dealer’s list or site. That’s how my little girl got some of her 1897 coins.
I’d show Mom a toner or DMPL Morgan I’d bought and she’d say it was pretty and she would show a slight interest in my mangled mint errors but she wasn’t really into it like I am.
Sometimes she’d have some extra money and give it to me and tell me to buy something for my kid. She knew I’d buy coins-sometimes I’d buy some gold to throw in my safe deposit box or some 1997 Mint or Proof Sets, depending on how much she gave me. Sometimes she’d ask me if I was going to a show she read about in the paper and if I were low on cash then she slip me a hundred or 2 and tell me to buy something. Later I’d go to pay her back and she would always tell me not to worry about it but bring her a load of firewood next time I came over or check the oil in her car.
That weird toned GSA that gsaguy is always trying to buy from me was a birthday present from her when I turned 38. Now I’m glad I didn’t sell it to him.
We’d go in BooksAMillion a lot because Mom liked buying books for me & my kid. She was a school teacher and she liked to see people read. She bought me some Barber books when I started collecting 1897 stuff after my girl was born in 97 so I could study up on Barbers because 3 denominations from 1897 are Barbers. The only Barbers my girl & I collect are 1897.
She was supportive of me & my hobby all my life because she thought since I was collecting money it wasn’t all bad and was better than spending my money on beer & fishing. She was very frugal & conservative with her money.
Well several days ago my mom passed away from acute myelogenous leukemia. It was 1 month from the time she got sick until she died. She did 1 treatment of chemo that didn’t faze the cancer and spent the last 2 weeks on a ventilator in the ICU at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola Florida. At first she was on it for assistance then it turned into subsistence as her lungs, liver, & kidneys started failing and per her wishes I had her life support removed and she died with me standing beside her bed holding her hand.
I didn’t see her much while she was sick because we took a direct hit from Hurricane Ivan and the roads were impassable for about a week and she was in the hospital in Florida and I live in Alabama. Soon as they cleared the roads I was over there every day, sometimes twice a day. I’m a single parent & it got to be too much for me to handle my position in a fast paced, hard driving construction company, be a housewife and both a mother & father to my kid and deal with Mom so I quit my job so I could be with Mom her last days. We don’t have a family leave plan in the construction biz.
I still managed to read the board late at night & you guys’ hilarity & insanity provide me a welcome escape from the real world and helped me keep in perspective what was really important in life. I didn’t say anything about this on the board because I’m a private person and keep personal things to myself and I’m not a whiner but a few of you dealers & collectors knew about it and were very supportive of me and offered some kind words. Most of them had been through and some are going through the same thing right now with their families. The TBT/Anaconda/AT thing was going on then and I would have loved to gotten in there & thrown in my 2¢ but I just didn’t have it in me at the time.
Anyway Mom had health insurance and I’m fine financially & don’t need or want anything but some of you asked about making donations to a charity in her memory and I told you to wait until I got the details, and here they are.
Mom majored in Special Education, which she taught for 25 years. The first several years her students were 7th & 8th graders & were actually learning impaired children and they turned out to be productive members of society. The last several years her students were nothing more than lazy dumb illiterate junior criminals, 4th –6th graders with criminal records & on probation from the court. She couldn’t do much with them. She would read in the paper about somebody getting arrested for murder, robbery, burglary, or drugs and say that person had been her student.
That got too stressful and she took a job as a counselor the last 5 years and made an impact on the children’s life again.
Her former students & even their kids come up to me at church & at the store and tell me how she helped them and was always there for them and what a difference it made that somebody cared about them. Kids nowadays really have problems. Even after she retired she still was at the school as a volunteer helping the teachers out.
Because Mom was a schoolteacher for 30 years the principal at the school named a College Scholarship after her and I prefer something be done to help a child get an education instead of flowers that just die off and get thrown away or some charity that gives most of it’s money to the administrators instead of the people that need it the most. This isn’t a nationwide deal but a local organization that manages several hundred scholarships and distributed $400,000 in scholarships last year. The principal asked me to serve on the committee that screens applicants and determines the amount of $$ to be awarded but I don’t know if I want to get involved in all that.
Make checks to:
South Baldwin Education Foundation (SBEF)
PO Box 1600
Foley Al 36536
And put on the check For: Donna Geci Memorial Scholarship or simply For: Donna Geci. If you want to put a note in with it saying you didn’t know her but are her son’s internet coin collecting friend that would be cool.
Thank you for all your support & kind words the last several years guys & gals. It means a lot to me even I don’t know a lot of you personally.
Regards, Dog
That’s mom and my girl, Amber Morgan, named after George T. himself, about 6 weeks ago.
Mom & her mother got me started collecting when I was 6 when they gave me 12 circ silver dollars; 10 Peace & 2 Morgans. I still have those 12 silver dollars and have been a Morgan collector every since. We did the Whitman folder thing looking through pocket change too. My grandmother was the cashier at the power company and let me root through her cash register back in the 60’s & early 70’s.
When Mom’s 2nd husband died she was an old widow lady then so I took care of her. Every year around Christmas time she would ask me “What do you want for Christmas boy?” I’d say, “Well I saw some coins I wouldn’t mind getting.” So she’d give me some cash and tell me to get what I wanted & call it my Christmas present. I would buy a coin I’d seen on eBay or on some dealer’s list or site. That’s how my little girl got some of her 1897 coins.
I’d show Mom a toner or DMPL Morgan I’d bought and she’d say it was pretty and she would show a slight interest in my mangled mint errors but she wasn’t really into it like I am.
Sometimes she’d have some extra money and give it to me and tell me to buy something for my kid. She knew I’d buy coins-sometimes I’d buy some gold to throw in my safe deposit box or some 1997 Mint or Proof Sets, depending on how much she gave me. Sometimes she’d ask me if I was going to a show she read about in the paper and if I were low on cash then she slip me a hundred or 2 and tell me to buy something. Later I’d go to pay her back and she would always tell me not to worry about it but bring her a load of firewood next time I came over or check the oil in her car.
That weird toned GSA that gsaguy is always trying to buy from me was a birthday present from her when I turned 38. Now I’m glad I didn’t sell it to him.
We’d go in BooksAMillion a lot because Mom liked buying books for me & my kid. She was a school teacher and she liked to see people read. She bought me some Barber books when I started collecting 1897 stuff after my girl was born in 97 so I could study up on Barbers because 3 denominations from 1897 are Barbers. The only Barbers my girl & I collect are 1897.
She was supportive of me & my hobby all my life because she thought since I was collecting money it wasn’t all bad and was better than spending my money on beer & fishing. She was very frugal & conservative with her money.
Well several days ago my mom passed away from acute myelogenous leukemia. It was 1 month from the time she got sick until she died. She did 1 treatment of chemo that didn’t faze the cancer and spent the last 2 weeks on a ventilator in the ICU at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola Florida. At first she was on it for assistance then it turned into subsistence as her lungs, liver, & kidneys started failing and per her wishes I had her life support removed and she died with me standing beside her bed holding her hand.
I didn’t see her much while she was sick because we took a direct hit from Hurricane Ivan and the roads were impassable for about a week and she was in the hospital in Florida and I live in Alabama. Soon as they cleared the roads I was over there every day, sometimes twice a day. I’m a single parent & it got to be too much for me to handle my position in a fast paced, hard driving construction company, be a housewife and both a mother & father to my kid and deal with Mom so I quit my job so I could be with Mom her last days. We don’t have a family leave plan in the construction biz.
I still managed to read the board late at night & you guys’ hilarity & insanity provide me a welcome escape from the real world and helped me keep in perspective what was really important in life. I didn’t say anything about this on the board because I’m a private person and keep personal things to myself and I’m not a whiner but a few of you dealers & collectors knew about it and were very supportive of me and offered some kind words. Most of them had been through and some are going through the same thing right now with their families. The TBT/Anaconda/AT thing was going on then and I would have loved to gotten in there & thrown in my 2¢ but I just didn’t have it in me at the time.
Anyway Mom had health insurance and I’m fine financially & don’t need or want anything but some of you asked about making donations to a charity in her memory and I told you to wait until I got the details, and here they are.
Mom majored in Special Education, which she taught for 25 years. The first several years her students were 7th & 8th graders & were actually learning impaired children and they turned out to be productive members of society. The last several years her students were nothing more than lazy dumb illiterate junior criminals, 4th –6th graders with criminal records & on probation from the court. She couldn’t do much with them. She would read in the paper about somebody getting arrested for murder, robbery, burglary, or drugs and say that person had been her student.
That got too stressful and she took a job as a counselor the last 5 years and made an impact on the children’s life again.
Her former students & even their kids come up to me at church & at the store and tell me how she helped them and was always there for them and what a difference it made that somebody cared about them. Kids nowadays really have problems. Even after she retired she still was at the school as a volunteer helping the teachers out.
Because Mom was a schoolteacher for 30 years the principal at the school named a College Scholarship after her and I prefer something be done to help a child get an education instead of flowers that just die off and get thrown away or some charity that gives most of it’s money to the administrators instead of the people that need it the most. This isn’t a nationwide deal but a local organization that manages several hundred scholarships and distributed $400,000 in scholarships last year. The principal asked me to serve on the committee that screens applicants and determines the amount of $$ to be awarded but I don’t know if I want to get involved in all that.
Make checks to:
South Baldwin Education Foundation (SBEF)
PO Box 1600
Foley Al 36536
And put on the check For: Donna Geci Memorial Scholarship or simply For: Donna Geci. If you want to put a note in with it saying you didn’t know her but are her son’s internet coin collecting friend that would be cool.
Thank you for all your support & kind words the last several years guys & gals. It means a lot to me even I don’t know a lot of you personally.
Regards, Dog
That’s mom and my girl, Amber Morgan, named after George T. himself, about 6 weeks ago.
Change that we can believe in is that change which is 90% silver.
0
Comments
Mark
Come on over ... to The Dark Side!
I am very sorry to hear about your loss. My most sincere condelences.
Robert
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What awonderful mother you had thanks for sharing that story.
09/07/2006
Steve
Mike
Very Very Sorry to hear about the passing of your mother. Moms are very special.
Ken
42/92
W.C. Fields
That was a beautiful story. Your mom was indeed special. I'm sorry.....
Paul
I'm glad, though, that you have fond memories, and that she had a good life with a fine kid, being able to be of service to others in need
My sincere condolences to you and your family. I truly think that your Mom would be very proud if you did get involved in her honor - and it will also be good for you. You won't regret leaving your job for your Mom - Mom's are much more important. My husband is currently going through the same thing - and has been off work for 2 wks. now because he has gone to do the exact same thing - to be with his Mom in her last days. Thanks for sharing your story about such a great Mom that you had in supporting you in the hobby.
Pam
My daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 2 (2003). My son was diagnosed with Type 1 when he was 17 on December 31, 2009. We were stunned that another child of ours had been diagnosed. Please, if you don't have a favorite charity, consider giving to the JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation)
JDRF Donation
Dan
K S
Also, have dedicated my life's work to cancer research, developing new and better oncology medicines for 15 years now. Will go to work this morning and be thinking of you, your daughter, and your mom.
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
Bruce
Sorry to hear of the passing of your mother. As has been mentioned she is in a much better place now.
she raised one great caring person.I lost my Mom & Dad 25 yrs ago,and still miss them very much.
Al
In honor of the memory of Cpl. Michael E. Thompson
Sometimes, that relationship is all too short, but it will burn ever bright in your heart.
Your loss is very heavy, but your MOM will always be near you, loving and protecting
you and your family.
Camelot
Fairlaneman reminded me of this when my mother died nearly 1 1/2 years ago: "A Mother is the Life and Soul of a son."
You are your mother's finest piece of work and your daughter is splitting image of her! They even have the same hair bangs!
By the way (a little humor) Charles Barber must be jealous of George T. Morgan!!!!
Sorry to hear about your mom. Our prayers are with you and your family.
Cancer is a disease that needs to be wiped off the face of the earth. Your closeness with your Mother
brings a couple tears to this old grumpy guy.
As my wife said in her last words before passing on to this terrible illness, she said.....
"I'm going to be fine, it's you guys that have to be here and deal with all this."
I have learned this to be the truth.
The pain will never go away, but will become less sharp. And knowing you appreciate an unusual coin such as this.
I assume your dear Mother would as well. I post this coin in honor of your Mother. May she rest in peace.
Bryan
We started on these boards around the same time several years back, nothing I say will make the pain go away, I am sincerly sorry to hear of your loss. If there is anything I can do for you in this difficult time, please PM me.
God Bless your entire family, and may the healing process begin as you read through this thread.
Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Coin collecting is not a hobby, it's an obsession !
New Barber Purchases
Your Mom sounds like a special lady. I don't think there is a job more important then being a teacher and hearing about your Mom's work really shows it. I also respect how you are about being a great Dad to your kid. You got that from your Mom. Thanks for sharing the story.
missed, but left you with many great and lasting memories.
Ken
thanx for sharing your moms story and please accept my heart felt condolences.
Herb