Last week I mentioned coin columnist Barbara Lyon. This week I tried to find out more abouther.

Barbara Lyon was born (possibly) on November 28, 1938, the daughter of William R. Lyon(1918-1990) and Sonja Kowha Lyon (1919-2006). William was a self-employed fur buyer.Barbara worked as a secretary.

Her interest in coin collecting began as a child when her grandfather gave her an Indian HeadQuarter Eagle. She was a wooden money collector and served on the membership committee forthe International Organization of Wooden Money Collectors. She was publicity chairman for TheWooden Nickel Society of America.

Barbara lived in Pleasant Valley, New York. In 1962, she was involved with the formation of thePleasant Valley Stamp Collectors' Club. This became the Ferrary Society, named after animportant European collector. It was later known as the Ferrary Numismatic Society. BarbaraAnn Lyon was very active and served as club secretary and president in 1972. She had aspecialized collection of stamps featuring Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1963, Lyon contributed to The Register Herald of Pine Plains,New York; The News Review of Riverhead, Long Island; The Pleasant Valley News in New York;The News Republican in Millerton, New York, and probably more.

In 1964, Barbara offered her column free to any paper that wished to publish it. She asked onlythat the paper return a tear sheet with the article.

Barbara Lyon contributed the column to the Asbury Park Press beginning withthe issue of April 3, 1965. That first column appeared with no introduction.

Her column, continued until April 26, 1970. At the time, Ed Reiter was astaff writer for the Asbury Park Press. He continued the column with the issue of May 17, 1970.He went on to be one of the most successful coin columnists syndicated through the New YorkTimes.

Barbara Lyon contributed in as many as twenty papers at various times.These are examples:

Although the columns theoretically ran weekly, there were seldom four issues in a month. Thereis little overlap in the publication date of these papers and few examples of the same columnrunning in two papers.

The Morning Pioneer identified her as an editor with Numismatic Information Service. Thatname has been connected to several other numismatists, including Don Taxay around the sametime.

Last week I mentioned that Barbara was a member of the Amateur Coin Collectors Club andwriter for the ACCC Bulletin. She took over as editor of the Bulletin upon the death of founderWilliam Hibbert.

Barbara married Frederic Luis White (1938-2017) of Poughkeepsie, NY, on December 31, 1972.

She retained her interest in stamps. In 1974 she was secretary of the Franklin D. RooseveltPhilatelic Society and in 1973-75 assistant treasurer of the Ferrary Philatelic Society.

In 1975 she began contributing a column to Coin Collectors Digest. About the same time, shewrote a column for Antique and Art Weekly.

In 1977, as Barbara White, she received the NLG Maurice Gould Literary Award as best coincolumnist for in The Newtown Bee. I could not find those columns in thenewspaper's archives.

She was still living at the time of Frederic's death in 2017. They were living at The Hideout at LakeAriel, Pennsylvania.

Most of her columns are not available on the Newman Numismatic Portal or thenewspapers.com website.

Barbara Lyon's first column in the Asbury Park Press was followed by this brief item:

When Silberman was unsuccessful with this effort, he placed an ad in Coin World promoting aclub for collecting old large cents. That was the beginning of the Early American Coppers Club,but that's another story.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
WILLIAM CHARLES HIBBERT, SR. (1909-1968)(https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n44a18.html)