Better keep an eye on that Iola place

If geography means anything on the new American Numismatic Association board of governors, Iola, Wis., has it wired. This little village of 1,320 people is home to three of the nine incoming members.

The top two vote getters, Cliff Mishler and Chet Krause, have called this place home for many years. Chet was born just outside of town and Cliff moved here in 1963 to take up duties with Numismatic News that ultimately led him to become the president and chairman of the board of directors of Krause Publications, which publishes it.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Vice President-Elect Patti Finner also lives here and has been active in community affairs. When she married Rollie, she moved here and dove right into community matters.

As they say in TV commercials, there’s still more.

Former ANA president and executive director Ed Rochette lived in Iola for six years when he served as editor of Numismatic News. He left here in 1966 to become editor of the Numismatist when it was given its first permanent home out in Colorado Springs, Colo., as ANA headquarters was built.
That’s four persons out of nine.

Fortunately, though, there are no geographical agendas in the hobby. Iola isn’t vying for any favors from the ANA board and there is no reason for geographical proximity to be viewed as anything other than happenstance.

For many years Chet Krause had a large billboard just south of town calling Iola the Coin Collectors’ Capital. Charles Kuralt of CBS even heard of it, but unfortunately only after the billboard had come down, so we didn’t get a nice human interest story on CBS Television that might have happened had the moniker still been actively used by Iola.

Of course, perhaps there are conspiracy theorists who will make something of this. Perhaps Iola is going to make a secret bid to move headquarters out of Colorado. After all, I was once president of the village and was always looking for economic development opportunities.

Yah think? Nah.