SEATTLE BIDS JOE BOLING FAREWELL Público Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 9, Number 36, September 3, 2006, Article 18
SEATTLE BIDS JOE BOLING FAREWELL
American Numismatic Association Chief Judge Joe Boling is moving
from his longtime Seattle home, and a local newspaper bid him farewell
with a nice article:"Joseph E. Boling keeps a large, white safe — large enough to double
as a sarcophagus — in his basement, a 40-minute drive south of Seattle
if the traffic is light. He tells the movers, who are packing his
things to move to Indianapolis, that it weighs 4,000 pounds when empty.
Currently, the safe is full of rare coins, medals, bills, and bonds.
Boling is a numismatist, a student of money, author of two books on
the subject and editor of four. He began his avocation in numismatics
during his army career...""Boling became interested in theater during his last army tour, in
Heidelberg, Germany, where he worked with an amateur American theater
company and "got the monkey on my back." He moved to Seattle in 1993,
after his army discharge. In 1994, Boling saw 22 plays. In 1996, he
saw 29. Then, in 1998, the number grew to 135. "I discovered Capitol
Hill," he said. "I had been going to the opera, ACT. I went to the TPS
[Theatre Puget Sound] conference in the fall of 1998 and found all
these little companies. I realized I could go to theater seven days
a week."But why? Why would he — why would anyone — want to sit in a theater
seven nights a week? "I have the collector's personality, obsessive-
compulsive," he said. "I've never been diagnosed. But I'm a pack rat."
He gestured around his basement, neat but cramped: his library of
books on Japan, theater, and numismatics; shelves of DVDs and
laserdiscs; filing cabinets, one of them devoted to theater programs
and clippings of reviews of productions he's seen; and the enormous
white safe. "I don't just collect coins and bills; I collect
theatrical experiences.""After a farewell party on September 3, Boling will head east. His
wife — to whom he was married for 20 years, then divorced for 20 years,
and has recently remarried — lives in Ohio and bought a house for them
in Indianapolis, close to their children. He is already feeling
theater withdrawal. "My wife has season tickets to the Toledo Rep,"
he said, smiling. "But she doesn't have the obsession that I do."To read the complete article, see: Full Story
- 2006-09-03
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