John William McCloskey was born on March 2, 1938 in Dayton, Ohio, the oldest of three sons, to John Henry McCloskey and Helen Rose (Kinzig) McCloskey. John's fatherwas the sixth of nine children in his family and was only thirteen when his father, John Thomas McCloskey, died in 1922. He appears in the 1930 census, as one of six children,ages 1 4 through 27, living at home with their widowed mother. John Henry is listed as a "toolmaker" working at an electric refrigerator plant, and each of his fivesiblings also held jobs to help support the family, all of which the census taker recorded. While single mothers had the worst lot of anyone during the depression, JohnHenry's mother was surrounded by productive children. In 1935 John Henry and his bride rented a house at 209 South Findley Street in East Dayton while he was employed as atool maker, working for the ACME Pattern Tool Company. The economy relapsed in 1937 before gathering steam again during the war years. The family purchased a small home at 335West Siebenthaler Avenue in North Dayton in 1940, and later moved to a larger residence at 132 Valley View Dr. in November 1945.

The family lived at the Valley View address for 33 years and it was here that young John spent his early years and developed a budding interest in coinage. He had a paper routeat thirteen and spent his summers on a golf course as a caddy at Miami Valley Golf Club. This experience instilled in him a love for the outdoors and ended with him serving as acaddy for Ted Kroll during the PGA Championship when it was held at Miami Valley Golf Club during August 1957. Two years later, another young Ohioan, Jack Nicklaus, won the firstof his U.S. Amateur titles, before taking the PGA himself in 1963. John was fascinated watching how the game was played at the highest level and this experience created hispassion for golf that continues to this day. He has played well enough over the years to record five holes-in-one, four of them since the age of 60.

John attended Chaminade High School, a private school in Dayton, and graduated third in his class in June 1956. He then entered the University of Dayton and received a BSdegree with a nnajor in Mathematics in June 1960. He married Norma Jean Monnin on August 6, 1960 and the young couple set out for Michigan State University where John had receiveda Graduate Assistantship in the Department of Statistics. He received his Masters Degree in 1962 and his PhD in 1965, both degrees in Statistics from Michigan State University.His PhD thesis involved a computer simulation of a statistical model at a time when computers were just beginning to be utilized in academic research.

Life as a University Professor

After considering several options John returned to his home town and accepted a position on the faculty of the University of Dayton as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics.While John was establishing himself in his academic career he and his wife Norma had four children, Susan Ann in 1963, John Thomas in 1965, Lisa Renee in 1966 and Mark William in1972. As he advanced professionally John was appointed to a four year term as Chairman of the Mathematics Department at the University of Dayton on July 1 , 1976. Recognizing thathe would be spending long hours performing his new academic duties, John felt he needed some extra time to prepare himself for the demands of his new responsibilities. Hetherefore signed up for a Sierra Club camping trip to the Uinta Mountains in Utah during June 1976 to think about his future in a peaceful and inspiring location. This was animportant decision because the trip provided him with such a rewarding experience that he returned to the western mountains many times before the beginning of a new academicyear.

John served twelve years as Chairman of the Mathematics Department, completing his third four year term on June 30, 1988. At this point he decided to test his skills in aphysical challenge to celebrate completing his responsibilities as a departmental Chairman. He had always found inspiration on his trips to the mountains and decided to attempt adifficult physical challenge; he would try to climb a 14,000 foot peak. He studied his maps, read the climbing books and identified a peak in Colorado that he thought he couldsuccessfully climb. This turned out to be Redcloud Peak in Southwestern Colorado at 14,034 feet.

After several months of training he flew to Colorado during July 1988 and set up camp near the trailhead to Redcloud Peak. He had climbed in the mountains many times before buthad never tried to climb one of the high peaks. But with a clearly defined goal and by refusing to be denied when challenged, he reached the peak after a long five hour climb andwas over-joyed by his success and the beautiful landscape that surrounded him. It was such an exhilarating experience that he knew he would have to try it again!

... This success led to many other trips to the western mountains over the next twenty years where he has successfully climbed 31 peaks over 14,000 feet, all of them since theage of 50.

In the fall of 1988 John returned to his position as Full Professor in the Mathematics Department at the University of Dayton and resumed his teaching and research duties. Hisprofessional work involved mathematical modeling where a mathematical structure is imposed upon a physical phenomenon to obtain information that would not be apparent by simplyobserving data. John served an additional thirteen years on the faculty at the University of Dayton before retiring in June 2001 after 36 years of service.

Early Collecting Interests

John's collecting interests began in 1948 at the age of ten with a jar of old Lincoln cents that his father kept in a desk drawer in the den. He would dump the coins out ona table and line them up by date to see how many he could find. As his father added coins to the jar he would try to fill the holes in the date sequence for the series. Beforelong his father bought him a coin folder for Lincoln cents and he began searching through change to fill in the missing dates. Thousands of children John's age were doingprecisely the same thing, as a rising coin boom which continued unabated through the mid-1960s began to take shape. The Redbook first appeared in 1946, while periodicals such asthe Numismatic Scrapbook Magazine became thicker every month. By the late 1950s the need for a weekly coin magazine was evident, and Coin World was launched in 1960.Much of the commercial activity was focused on modern issues, BU rolls of recent vintage or supposedly rare items like 1950-D Jefferson nickels. John took a different path, andearly on developed a taste for the older, more esoteric issues.

At 13 John would take a trolley bus to downtown Dayton and purchase nice circulated Lincoln cents, Buffalo nickels and Mercury dimes. At 15 he would ride twenty miles on hisbicycle with a friend to visit Whitt's Hobby Shop in Franklin, Ohio. While there he would purchase Barber dimes for 35 cents. Barber quarters for 65 cents and Barber halfdollars for $1.25. He began collecting Seated dimes in 1955 because they represented the next oldest dime series and many of them could be purchased at reasonable prices in nicecirculated grades. In doing so, John landed in virgin territory. The first American collectors tended to focus on Colonial and early copper issues; later, in the first half of thetwentieth century, the second wave of collectors began pursuing early silver varieties with the three Bs - Browning, Beistle and Bolender who had taken the lead in cataloguingBust coinage. Seated coinage remained largely unexplored.

Seated Dime Research

While initially collecting Seated coinage John was attracted to the sharp lines and fine detail in the design that was lacking on many of the 20th century coins. But collectingthis series soon presented some concerns because some of the dates were very rare and nobody seemed to know how to authenticate individual specimens. One particular incident witha rare date made a lasting impression on him. In 1964 he visited a coin shop in Lincoln, Nebraska and was shown a nice original 1866 dime in a VG grade. This was a very rare datewith a low mintage and he had never even seen one before. The purchase price was $12 and he was thrilled to have the opportunity to buy an example of this rare Civil War issue.But upon returning home he compared this coin with the 1866-S dime in his collection and found that he could not find any distinguishing features between the two pieces. Themintmark on his 1866-S dime was very weak and he feared that the San Francisco mintmark might have been completely worn off the VG coin that he had just purchased as an 1866 dime.Only several years later did he learn of the differences in date position between 1866 and 1866-S dimes that could confirm the mint of origin for coins of this date.

Research Activities as LSCC President

John began his term as President of LSCC in September 1975 and has published three issues of the Gobrecht Journal each year for the past 34 years. His numismatic skillswere demonstrated very early when he published an article in Issue #2 describing the new Type II reverse first used on Seated dimes in 1876. This article included a list of thedates for which both Type I and Type II coins were known. In Issue #3 he published an article that listed the reeding count for all dates in the Seated dime series. He then showedthat the rare Carson City and New Orleans dates could be authenticated by the number of reeds along their edge. In Issue #5 he published articles on the 1841-0 Transitional dimes,the three mintmark sizes for 1862-S half dollars and reeding counts for Seated half dimes. In Issue #6 he described die characteristics that distinguish 1866 and 1866-S dimes,described and illustrated a new reverse hub for quarters in 1861 and described the 1840-O Transitional half dime. He continued to show his extensive knowledge of Seated coinageover the years by publishing a steady stream of ground breaking articles on all Seated denominations from half dimes to Trade Dollars.

One of the most important decisions that John made in the early years was to publish collective volumes of the material that had appeared in earlier issues of the journal.During the late 1970s new club members would request copies of back issues from previous years. After the club ran out of back issues there were discussions on how to meet agrowing demand for this material. The simplest approach would have been to reprint extra copies of the earlier issues as they were originally printed. However, John felt that thiswas not the best approach because the ads were no longer current and specific articles would be difficult to find in individual booklets. He felt that a better way to preserve thematerial published by the club would be to reprint the articles that had been published over a five year span in a single collective volume. He then decided to reorder thearticles by denomination and date so that all of the material on a particular topic would appear together in the new volume. This required a massive restructuring of the publishedmaterial but a 367 page manuscript eventually emerged containing the articles in the first 18 issues of the journal. This manuscript was published in 1981 and became CollectiveVolume Number One. It was so successful that three more collective volumes were published, each containing the restructured articles over a five year span. A new Collective VolumeNumber Five covering the years from 1995 to 2000 is about ready for publication.

In recent years John has used his knowledge of gold coinage to prepare a number of articles that run across all denominations from copper half cents to gold double eagles. InIssue #74 he described and illustrated five date punches of varying size for the year 1842 that were used to prepare the dates on 10 denominations of coinage from copper halfcents to gold eagles. His analysis showed that the Small Date and Large Date varieties for Seated quarters and half dollars were the result of nothing more than a switch from oneavailable date punch to another while preparing the coinage dies. In Issue #100 he described the seven date punches of varying size for the year 1856 that were used to prepare thedates on 13 denominations of coinage from copper half cents to gold double eagles, only this time there was an interesting pattern of slanted and upright 5s used on the datepunches. In Issue #84 he illustrated three mintmark sizes that were used on San Francisco dies for 10 denominations of coinage from the dime to the gold double eagle during the NoMotto era from 1854 to 1866. This analysis showed that the same mintmark punch was used on many different denominations of coinage during these years.

From Seated to Bust coinage, and later to gold, John has exhibited an insatiable curiosity coupled with careful and systematic analyses in order to produce standard works whichwill endure for the foreseeable future. The respect he has won from his peers is considerable, yet easily forgotten. Giants like Harry Bass, who knew gold varieties as well asanyone, are no longer on the scene to attest to John's acumen. Likewise, Kam Ahwash, who passed away so prematurely, surely had stories relating to how he and John pushed eachother to continually dig deeper into the production of Seated coinage. As is demonstrated by John's Bust dime and half dime books, truly outstanding numismatic research isoften a group effort, achieved by a number of high-performing individuals who are willing to collaborate as a team, share findings, and consistently challenge both old and newfindings. John has exercised this ability within LSCC as well, and today serves as a sounding board and voice of reason to all those interested in researching Gobrecht'ssilver coinage from the 19th century. We are quite blessed with his presence, and hope that he continues to scale his mountains, numismatic and otherise, well into the future.

To read the complete article, see:
https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/179?page=4

W. David Perkins of Centennial, CO writes:

THE PROFESSOR'S PASSION - John McCloskey takes SeatedLiberty coinage seriously (https://coinweek.com/coin-clubs/the-professors-passion-john-mccloskey-takes-seated-liberty-coinage-seriously/)
A History of the JOHN REICH COLLECTORS SOCIETY (http://jrcs.org/aboutjrcs_history.php)

Len Augsburger writes:

Dave Lange writes:

To read Mccloskey's online obituary in the Dayton Daily News, see:
McCLOSKEY, John(https://www.daytondailynews.com/classifieds/obituaries-announcements/mccloskey-john/L1YCljNiLfgvk6taB8Y6YI/)