ROGER BOYE

Sometimes I start a project and get distracted before it is completed. I am probably not the only one with that problem. Earlier this year I started to compile a list of writers who provided coin columns for local newspapers. Since my subject for this week is still living, the information I include will be a little different from my typical biography.

Roger Boye was born in Nebraska in 1948. His parents were Arthur John Boye (1915-1969), a pharmacist, and Matilda Jean Boye (1919-1997). Both served in the U.S. Army in World War II.

Roger began collecting coins as a Cub Scout to meet an elective requirement. He soon joined the Lincoln Coin Club. In 1964, he was given a class assignment to interview someone outside his family and not affiliated with the school. He arranged to interview John Gabarron who was a founding member of the Lincoln Coin Club, former ANA Librarian and sergeant-at-arms. His high school article was reprinted in The Numismatist in July 2009. Roger graduated from Lincoln (NE) High School in 1966.

He then enrolled in the University of Nebraska School of Journalism. In 1966 his first articles appeared in the Lincoln Journal and in 1969 he was editor-in-chief of the Daily Nebraskan, the university's student newspaper. In 1970 he enrolled in the masters' program at Northwestern University, graduating in 1971.

That same year he began teaching part time at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism and full time starting in 1985. For nearly 20 years he was assistant dean and director of undergraduate studies at Medill and has been a Northwestern professor for nearly 40 years. He also directed the Medill-Northwestern Journalism Institute since 1985 and is faculty chair of Northwestern's Communications Residential College.

His first coin collecting column appeared in the Chicago Tribune on March 24, 1974. He got the job after submitting sample columns and at first earned $25 for each one published. That weekly column continued until September 1980. In some weeks he received more than five hundred letters from readers.

In 1992, Roger won the Maurice M. Guild Memorial award for best coin column in a non-numismatic newspaper from the Numismatic Literary Guild. He had also received the award previously.

Roger's coin columns in the Chicago Tribune, numbering nearly a thousand, are archived on the Newman Numismatic Portal. Also, from 1983 to 1999 he wrote the numismatic articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year, a job he inherited from Glenn Smedley, a former ANA governor and editor of The Numismatist.

He became life member LM-1535 of the American Numismatic Association in 1974. (Glenn Smedley signed his application for membership). In June 1989 he was listed on the Editorial Advisory Board for The Numismatist with other prestigious names of Eric Newman, Donn Pearlman and Edward Rochette. In 1996 he was appointed chair of the Publications Committee. Since then, he has been a contributing editor to the publication.

Mr. Boye reviewed a draft of this article and added valuable comments.

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