Living People on United States Money
One of the more pleasant aspects of coin collecting is the ability to obtain portraits of famous people from over the centuries. Until modern times, and the advent of commemorative coins, this almost always meant the ruler of a given country. Because the use of living people on the coinage smacked of royalty, it was long a tradition in this country that this should not happen. However, portraits of living people have appeared on our coinage, and as recently as 1995.
When this topic arose in early 1792 during debates on the proposed mint act, it is said that President Washington personally intervened with key Congressmen to keep him and succeeding presidents from appearing on the circulating coinage.
It is not quite true, of course, that living people did not appear on U.S. coins during the 19th century. In several cases, such as the Morgan dollar of 1878, the artist used a model to create the ideal head of Liberty but this hardly qualified as honoring a prominent person. Such artistic license is still in vogue, as witnessed by the obverse design of the recent Golden dollar, which used a live model to portray the likeness of Sacagawea.
The most contentious use of a living portrait came in 1995 when Eunice Kennedy Shriver, sister of President John F. Kennedy, was honored for her role in creating the International Special Olympics,
