A Mom's influence on the life and hobby of a collector
Askari
Posts: 3,713 ✭
Many of you know Dog97, even though he doesn't post on the Dark Side. What many of you don't know is that his mother passed away recently. We've been sharing in encouraging each other as his mother and my sister (who lives in the Florida Panhandle as well) have both been undergoing treatment for cancer amidst the recent hurricanes. It's always hard to lose a parent, but especially a mother -- and Randall was raised a single child by his single mom. He has asked that anyone who wishes to send a memorial contribute to a scholarship set up in her memory and honor by the school district where she taught. He asked me to post a mirror to his thread on the Liteside for his friends here, which you'll find below. Now, please excuse me ... I've got something in my eyes. 
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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.
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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.
Askari
Come on over ... to The Dark Side!
Come on over ... to The Dark Side!
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Total Copper Nutcase - African, British Ships, Channel Islands!!!
'Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup'
WNC Coins, LLC
1987-C Hendersonville Road
Asheville, NC 28803
wnccoins.com
This isn't my board and I never contribute anything to it so I didn't feel comfortable to just jump in here and start posting away.
Even though I pick on Askari when he comes trolling on the US Coin Board I like him and call him my friend. Askari has sent 1897 coins to my little girl in the past. He's not the only one, others of you and even some members in foreign countries have sent my kid 97 coins and I've sent DarkSide stuff to some of you guy's kids. It's little things like that that mean a lot to me and makes me call somebody my friend and what coin collecting is all about.
I was telling him that I got a 1697 GB 6 pence in a 63 slab that I was going to post here if I can ever make a decent picture of it. It's toned and I just can't get it right.
I'm trying to get my 4-year old daughter into collecting, but she's more of a pack rat than a real collector.
Obscurum per obscurius
Many of you don't know that it was Dog's joining the CU Forums that really made them lively and to take off. There are few members who have contributed nearly as much as he has over the years to the forums here. I'm proud to call him my friend ... besides, I've seen what he can do to eBay scammers and that ilk.
Come on over ... to The Dark Side!
Jeff Coates(GaCoinGuy, Cedartown Ga)