|
|
Two
and a half dollar US Currency Gold Piece
This
two and a half dollar gold piece was minted in 1914.
Those were turbulent times.
World War I had just begun in Europe in August of that year.
President Woodrow Wilson responded with a statement of neutrality but the
1915 sinking of the luxury liner Lusitania and 1916 German declaration of
unrestricted submarine warfare compelled the United States to join World War I
in April, 1917.
German U-Boats patrolled the Atlantic.
Overhead, aircraft with names such as Bleriot, Sopwith and Fokker
patrolled the skies.
American made planes were yet to come and when they did, US Capt. Eddie
V. Rickenbacker would end the war as an ace pilot with 26 enemy planes
destroyed. At
home the Ford Model T was the basic automotive transportation.
It was 1914 and the world was changing drastically.
In
the town of Lewiston, Idaho, Edwin Thomas (D. Dad) and Edith Belle (Nana)
Hollister Jacobs had recently arrived from Wetaskwin, Alberta Canada with their
five children to settle at 307 2nd Avenue.
Born in 1901, their son Richard (Dick) Earl Jacobs, my father, was 13
years old when this coin was minted.
My mother, Beatrice Katherine Lorang was born in Spokane Washington in
1915 one year after the coin was put into circulation, and she and her family
moved to Lewiston where she met Dick Jacobs when she was in her early twenties.
In 1938 Dick and Beatrice were married and in October 1939 they gave
birth to me, their first-born, Gale Newton ‘Jake’ Jacobs.
Newton came from Newt Hollister, my grandmother’s father.
My mother, my father and I lived together with Nana and D-Dad at the 2nd
Avenue address and Nana and I developed a strong and special bond before my four
siblings came along.
After D-Dad died in 1941, Nana moved to Pullman to help her other son
Franklin, who had recently lost his wife.
Visits to Pullman to see Nana were always special trips.
She always made me feel special. She believed in me.
Nana
later moved back to Lewiston where she spent her final days in the comfort of
her daughter EdaBelle’s home.
I often rode my bike across town to visit Nana, taking gifts I had made
and enjoying long talks with her.
She was a wonderful, loving caring person, sharp of mind and wit, crowned
with red hair that she kept in a long braid, she was a perfect grandmother.
When I was a small infant, Nana had presented me with this 1914 gold
piece as a memento of her love, to be handed down to the first-born sons of
future generations.
I have kept this gold piece for 60 years as my most important treasure.
It has somehow survived all my moves and life’s experiences and was
waiting to be recovered from my safety deposit box when you arrived, Christian.
So, the tradition continues.
Take this coin as my special gift you and treasure it through the years,
looking forward to the day that you can pass it along to your first-born and
secure the line of continuity back to Edith Belle Hollister Jacobs -our Nana.
At about the time this coin begins to mean something to you it will
become time to hand it down to the next generation, and it will be more than one
hundred years old.
It will have seen many interesting and wonderful times.
Love, your grandfather, Gale Newton Jacobs – July 4, 2000
J
Dad