The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 22, May 30, 2004, Article 10

BREEN'S MANA JOURNAL EDITORSHIP TENURE

  Dick Johnson writes: "To answer David F. Fanning's question
  in last week's E-Sylum:  Walter Breen and I put out the first
  issue of the MANA News. We worked in the basement office
  in the home of Eldridge Jones, one of MANA?s founders and
  longtime MANA secretary. Walter was in Washington DC at
  the time doing his research at the National Archives (I was in
  the Air Force stationed nearby). It was July 1953.

  I remember the night we worked that first issue. We had to
  get the text to Ed Rice in New Jersey who had made
  arrangements to print it. We rushed the envelope containing
  the final text to the Main DC Post Office ? at that time they
  kept a window open until midnight or 2 am (Oh! there was no
  FedEx then). We kept asking the clerk for a faster way to get
  it to the New Jersey destination. His harried reply: ?The only
  faster way to get it there was to take it yourself!?

  Later Walter and I went on a buying trip through the South to
  Miami, underwritten by Ben Douglas, a coin dealer with a shop
  in DC.  He wanted us to buy up all the Confederate currency
  we could find.  I remember Walter's best buy, however, was
  a Heaton Mint Canadian coin in a junk box at an antique dealer
  in Charleston, SC.  Incidentally I taught Walter to drive a car
  on that trip.

  Walter had rented a room in a basement apartment on
  Connecticut Avenue next door to the Ecuadorian embassy in
  DC. It had an elevator with an open cage.  Walter hated it.
  But on our trip to Miami he complained he was paying triple
  rent: His apartment in NYC, the room in DC and a hotel room
  on the trip.

  I don't know how long Walter's name was kept on the MANA
  News masthead. Later issues were still done in DC while Walter
  was in NYC and still later the name was changed to MANA
  Journal. Roger Cohen of half-cent fame who lived in Baltimore
  may have been involved. (My name was removed when I was
  discharged, entered Washington University in St. Louis to
  complete my coolege educashun.)  Anyone with a run of these
  MANA periodicals can pinpoint those exact dates."

  Clifford Mishler writes: "In the event no one has come forward
  with more definitive information, perhaps I can be helpful to
  David Fanning in his pursuit of information on the span of time
  Walter Breen was involved with the MANA Journal.  I happen
  to have a reasonably good run of the Journal, along with its
  predecessor, MANA News, from the mid- through the late 50s.
  My earliest issue of the News is vol. 2, no. 2, July 1954, where
  he is listed as editor, as he is in vol. 2, no. 3, October 1954,
  through vol. 5, no. 1, March 1957. That ends my run of the
  News. The first issue of the MANA Journal that I find is vol. 1,
  no. 2, October 1957, where he is listed as associate editor, as
  he is for the issues of 1958 as well. For the issues of 1959 he
  is listed as a contributor. Thereafter, his name is not present."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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