CREATING THE KENNEDY HALF DOLLAR

On Dec. 10, 1963, President Lyndon Johnson asked Congress to authorize the new Kennedy coin. The Associated Press reported, “If approved quickly, present plans are to have the coin in circulation early next year.

“The design — to be taken from a ‘presidential series medal’ now being produced in Philadelphia — is already in existence and little cost or delay would be entailed in making new dies, the White House said.”

The cost was estimated at $1,000. The bill quickly and nearly unanimously passed both houses of Congress. “Few House members, however, were willing to risk a vote at this time against anything carrying the Kennedy name.” Elston G. Bradfield reported in The Numismatist. Johnson signed the bill Dec. 30.

Mint officials, however, did not wait for formal approval of the legislation to make the necessary hub and die tooling, and start producing test strikes of the 1964 coins even before the bill became law. In his report to Adams on April 29, Gasparro wrote, “At 9 a.m. on Dec. 13th we struck our first trial (pattern) pieces.” That same day he flew to Washington to deliver the coins to Adams who, in turn, sent them to Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon and President Johnson.

On Dec. 17, Roberts showed a prototype of the coin to the president’s widow. He told interviewer David Lisot in a videotaped American Numismatic Association Numismatic Profile in 1991, “They wanted Mrs. Kennedy to see — this is the portrait that is on the half dollar. And I had emphasized the part in his hair.

“He had a great shock of hair as you recall, and most artists, when they did a Kennedy portrait, they made a lot of this shock of hair, thinking that’s going to help them to make it look like Kennedy, you know. Well, they were right, but they had a tendency to overemphasize this part in his hair. And Mrs. Kennedy looked at the coin, and she said, ‘Could you muss up his hair a little bit?’

“All right, I thought, that was a wonderful criticism. She was a bit of an artist herself, and I think that aspect of the likeness was the first thought in her mind. It was very helpful, so I mussed up his hair and sort of half hid the part, made it less obvious, which helped. It was good criticism so I thanked her, too, for that helpful hint.”

The obverse design was revised to “muss” the hair and another trial strike made. Roberts flew to West Palm Beach, Fla., Dec. 27 to show the revised design to the Treasury secretary, who signed off on it.

To read the complete article, see: 50 years later: Jackie O asks for 'mussed up' hair on Kennedy half dollar before Congress' near-unanimous approval (www.coinworld.com/insights/kennedy-half-dollar-50th-anniversary-coin-world-numismatics-jfk-jackie-o-collecting.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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