ANA Summer Seminar
Through the years I’ve put in a fair number of cameo appearances at the ANA’s annual Summer Seminar sessions in Colorado Springs, which in 2018 celebrated its 50 th renewal. This first year of its second half-century was no exception. For the first time since 2011, when I was closing out the second year of my two-year term as ANA president, I determined an opportune occasion was presenting itself.
The ANA Summer Seminar presents our hobby community with a great educational, networking and mixing opportunity. Originated in 1969 by Ed Rochette, then editor of The Numismatist, and Adna Wilde, then executive director, both of whom are no longer with us, that first installment featured one class and two field trips. It hosted just 16 students but was decreed a “huge success” by then president Arthur Sipe and all participants in attendance. In recent years it has typically welcomed upwards of 400 students who have been able to avail themselves of more than 25 specialized courses over two sessions, plus varied evening lectures and extracurricular excursion options.
My travels to Colorado Springs on this occasion got underway early morning on the third
