Robert Rightmire writes:

I was born on a large farm near Potlatch, Idaho, on August 6th, 1903, and I took to farming in the same manner that a cat takes to water. In those benighted days, transportation being what it was, and a heavy rainstorm having occurred, the doctor ambled out to my ancestral home with something in the nature of a horse and buggy, rather late in the morning, and much too late to do any good. Nevertheless, he saw fit to make a charge for services which was indignantly refused. Born protesting, I am still doing it, and I am still at heart a rebel.

My ancestry is English and Norwegian, mostly the former, and the great majority of my people on the paternal side live in the South. My lineage, such as it is, has nothing about it aristocratic and I am a son of the people, a thing which troubles me not a whit.

Honors in debating and oratory. Graduate of Washington University with an M.A. in history and English. Some newspaper reporting experience. Alternated between welfare work and teaching and finally learned to dislike both. Private tutor in Mobile, Alabama, and taught mostly very small ladies who aspired to the Southern belles. Teaching of this kind I liked.

No conventional home of any kind although I try to make one wherever I find myself. Extremely cosmopolitan in outlook, I have a strong tendency to look upon most accepted social patterns with active dislike. Poet, essayist, and short story writer. I write fluently in the French verse forms and have a special interest in epigrams.

Mobile has one tiny coin shop and my interest in coins began with it. Much to my astonishment, I learned for the first time about United States commemoratives and then wondered how it was possible to live in a country and know so little about its coinage. I still wonder but not quite so much.

A Mobile tradesman refused a coin from me because he declared it was Canadian. It wasn't , but it was enough to start an interest in Canada which has never ceased. A shift of interest from American dollars to those of the Dominion came about easily enough. Vaguely, and as I imperfectly remember, I first heard of them in 1945.

As might be supposed, my primary interests are those of a scholar and research worker and I have studied homonyms and heteronyms in particular detail, enough to make possible a book. The subject was last written on in 1873. Flowers fascinate me, especially their genetics, and especially those relating to iris and carnations. Unmarried, I live in such solace as this condition of life is able to afford.

Starr Gilmore September 20, 1959
Spokane, Washington

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
QUERY: INFORMATION ON AUTHOR STARR GILMORE SOUGHT(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v16n01a22.html)
CORRECTION: STARR GILMORE BIBLIOGRAPHY(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v16n02a13.html)