Pennies

“A penny saved is a penny earned.”

--Benjamin Franklin

When I come home and change into more casual clothes, I take the change out of my pocket and put it on top of my dresser. At some point, I separate out the pennies and put them in a cup on my dresser. When that cup is full, I empty the pennies into a larger can. Months later, when I get ambitious I put the pennies into paper rolls holding 50 of each and exchange them for paper bills and larger coins at the bank.

I hardly ever take pennies with me, but I feel good if I can use them for a purchase and feel annoyed if I get some more of them as change for a purchase.

The U.S. Mint officially calls the penny a “cent.” The U.S. Treasury officially names it the “one cent piece.”  The name penny is of British origin and some sources say it comes from the name of a seventh-century ruler of Britain named Penda.

The Origin and Cost of a Penny

U.S. pennies are copper in color, but they are more than 98 percent zinc in total composition. At various times, including World War Two, the government decided to use an aluminum mix for pennies because copper was needed for the war effort or to reduce costs because of an increase in the cost of copper.

The current penny has its beginnings in 1909 when the U.S. Mint began producing Lincoln pennies to commemorate his birth in 1809. The Lincoln monument adorned the reverse side of the penny for decades and in 2009, the Mint decided to use four different “B” sides for the penny and retain Lincoln’s portrait on the front.

It costs the government $0.0167 to manufacture and distribute each penny, so the coin is already a money loser. In 2013 it cost $55 million to manufacture nearly 3.5 billion pennies. A significant number of them are probably stored in jars, cans or cups by private citizens and are not in circulation.

Rounding and the Demise of the Penny

Many experts suggest that we should do away with penny and simply allow business to round up or down each purchase to the nearest 5 cents. There was some sentiment for the U.S. Congress to act on this in 2013 when the Canadian government did away with penny and made rounding the law.

A lot of business interests support this, saying that it will save money by reducing the time for cashiers need to make change. However, polls show that most consumers don’t support this idea and about three quarters of them favor keeping the penny. Consumers fear they will lose money if businesses are allowed to round change. However, a number of economists say that the overall effect of eliminating the penny and allowing rounding will not favor either the consumer or merchants.

A group called Americans for Common Cents (www.pennies.org)  opposes the abolition of the penny by the government. The group says its own member polls show 71 percent think keeping the penny will prevent price increases.

A Final Note About Pennies

My senior year in high school, I signed up to take a chemistry class. It turned out to be a good decision, but not necessarily for educational reasons. I attended a Catholic high school, but that school had just hired a lay teacher who had just graduated from college.  Her name was Carol Crawford and she was a very attractive brunette and a welcome change from the nuns and priests who taught most of my other classes. Also, when she paired each of us with another student as a lab partner, I felt like I had won the lottery. My partner was a very attractive classmate named Ginny. So, I actually looked forward to chemistry class a lot that year, but not because of the Periodic Table of Elements.

During a lab session dealing with acids, we were instructed that we could use acid to clean pennies. Ginny and I put a drop of acid (I don’t remember which one) on a penny and it developed a like-new shine in seconds. Ginny grabbed a few more pennies from her purse and dropped acid on them with the same result. We were amazed at the result and I suggested there might be a demand for “Ginny’s Pennies.” I always was a sucker for rhymes.

The moral of this story is that we didn’t see much value in pennies then as currency and there is not much value now because billions of them are not in circulation, but being stored in cans, jars and other types of containers in our homes. They are not in circulation, but they cost our government millions each year as billions more are minted.

This is just a thought about how the government might save millions each year. But now, my penny containers are getting full, so I’ve got to get some penny rolls and think about what I want to do with the money I’m about to get. Woo Hoo!

Reflections on My High School Reunion

A little while ago, I wrote about high school reunions—some of the current trends, the numbers, and what people might expect to experience when they go to their own reunion. Last Saturday (June 25), my wife and I attended my 50-year reunion from Archbishop Alter High School in Kettering, Ohio. Exactly one week earlier (June 18), we attended Pam’s 50-year reunion of her graduating class at Hoover High School in North Canton, Ohio.

Originally, I thought about writing a column using the old standby method of “compare and contrast” (something that’s standard fare in high school English composition classes) to write about the two reunions. But, I decided against that. So, if you want to hear about Pam’s reunion, she will have to write about it.

A Unique Situation

My reunion was unique (but, then again, they all are) because our class of 1966 was the very first class to graduate from our high school. In September of 1962, about 270 of us started our freshman year in a brand-new building with no upperclassmen, traditions or much structure in terms of student activities or clubs, etc.

We graduated four years later from a school that had about 1,000 students, the best football team in the city and our basketball team made the district semifinals losing to the eventual state champions. Most importantly our school was making our community take notice of just how good we were and what we would become. Our class of 238 students sent grads to some of the best universities in the country, but a lot of us decided to continue our education or start careers closer to home.

Over the years, about two dozen class members had passed away and there were another 30 or so that the reunion committee could not locate. A reunion committee member told me about 100 class members would attend one of the reunion weekend activities—a participation rate of over 40 percent and well above the national average of 30 percent.

The Main Event

Due to scheduling conflicts, I only attended the Saturday night main event of reunion weekend. Many thanks to two of our classmates, Toni and Charlie, who generously volunteered their home for the event. Several tents were set up in their front yard, covering a large brick patio. There was a catered buffet dinner, a disc jockey and bartenders serving plenty of beer and wine.

The 90-degree day had turned into a delightful summer evening as the sun went down. The setting was nearly perfect.

The only other reunion I had attended was the 20-year reunion so I would be meeting people I had not seen in 30 or even 50 years! As my wife and I drove from our home near Akron, Ohio, to the Dayton area on Saturday afternoon, I will admit to feeling a bit of apprehension because I hadn’t seen so many of my classmates for so long. I shouldn’t have worried. The evening was a blast! Sorry for the archaic reference, but I really had a great time.

One of the reunion organizers set up a Facebook page a couple of months earlier specifically for our class. About 60 of us joined and we were able to get a preview of what our classmates looked like, their families, careers and so on. Classmates also posted photos and reminiscences on the site and that helped jog my memory about what happened during those four years. That was a big help.

On Saturday night, we reminisced about our school years together, the progress of our careers, children and grandchildren and our retirement plans. Over the course of several hours, I was able to meet many, but not all who were there. And there were some classmates who could not attend that I really wish could have been there. There were a couple of things about that evening I will really remember.

Stories to Remember

One classmate, Sue, told me that she had become related by marriage to another classmate Tom who was to ill to attend. He is battling leukemia and he specifically asked her to look me up because he wanted to know how I was doing. Tom and I had shared many good times during our high school years and I was saddened to hear about his illness.

I was manager of the basketball team for four years and had wonderful conversations with our coach and several of the players. Andy, a reserve guard and I talked about one tough road game senior year. He played more than usual because our starting guards had fouled out. Needing a basket with one second left to win, the other team defended the player who was supposed to take the final shot well, but Andy made a great cut to the basket got the pass and hit the game-winning shot at the buzzer.

Classmate Linda lives in Southern California, but could not attend. One classmate passed around a smartphone and many of us had the opportunity to say hello to her via the magic of Apple Facetime and the Internet.

In my last essay, I mentioned that old flames from high school sometimes reconnect at reunions. I don’t know if there were any reconnections at our reunion that weekend, but I did meet the girl I had a “crush” on during high school. We had a very enjoyable chat while sitting with her husband and my wife. For me, it was a surreal, yet pleasant experience sitting between the girl I was so interested in way back then and the woman I met at college and have been married to for 46 years.

The Inequality of Aging

One thing that did strike me is the inequality of aging. All of us are in our upper sixties, and some of my classmates looked great, while others had not been treated as well by the passage of time. Aging is definitely not a fair process.

Before going to this reunion, I had heard that the 50^th reunion was the most enjoyable of all for a couple of reasons. Most classmates attending would still be able to laugh and remember their high school years. Also, at our age our lives are pretty much set, most of the important things—jobs, family, community--that faced us earlier in our lives have been settled.

I don’t know when, if ever, I will see any of my classmates again. We live more than two hundred miles from where I went to high school and I don’t think any of my classmates live close to me now. I do know that it was a fun evening sharing memories of our high school years together.

Yes, I had a blast.

The Cavs, a Championship and a Parade

It is well documented that when the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA Championship on Sunday, June 19, it broke a 52-year drought for that city’s sports teams dating back to the 1964 NFL Champion Cleveland Browns. And yes, the Cavs overcame a 3-1 game deficit, something that no other NBA team had ever done, to win the title over the Golden State Warriors on the road at Oracle Arena in Oakland.

This is not a column about the accomplishments of this team, but it is about the effect this championship may have on the beleaguered city of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. I just finished watching six hours of the victory parade witnessed by an estimated one million people and the ceremony where the Cavs faced an adoring crowd of thousands on the Mall in downtown Cleveland.

A Long but Wonderful Parade

The plan was for a parade from Quicken Loans Arena to the Mall next to the Convention Center through downtown Cleveland. In regular traffic it would take you about 5-10 minutes to drive this distance. What no one anticipated was the huge crowd that would show up for the parade. The crowd was so big and the traffic so tied up that the Cavs, who were bussed in from their practice facility in the suburbs, were late for their own parade.

The parade started about 45 minutes late. But the crowd was so large and the streets on the parade route were so clogged with people that it took almost three hours for the parade to reach the Mall. Because the parade was moving so slowly, there were plenty of opportunities the fans to interact with the players in a way that showed true pride and affection.

TV coverage provided images like Cavs guard J.R. Smith—who had a “bad boy” reputation before joining the Cavs--hoisting a young boy on crutches onto the back of the truck he was riding and holding him up so he could see the crowd and the crowd cheered.  There was Cavs guard Imam Shumpert lifting up his infant daughter up for the crowd to see. A few months ago, he assisted in the birth of his daughter with help from a 911 operator because things moved faster than expected when his wife’s water broke.

During the parade, the rest of the Cavs exchanged high-fives and shook hands with fans and were the subject of thousands of selfies because the parade stopped completely at times and the crowds surged so close to the players. There was a whole lot of love shown for all the players, especially LeBron James, Akron’s native son who returned home to deliver a title to Northeast Ohio.

And there was the memorable moment when Browns all-time great Jim Brown, MVP of the 1964 team, and LeBron James together held up the NBA Championship trophy in front of an adoring mob. The curse of 52 years was broken.

A Chance to Celebrate

Okay, so it’s only a sports title and many may not think it’s very important and that may be true for a lot of cities. But, that’s not true for Cleveland—a city that’s been kicked around pretty good for the last half century. At one time, Cleveland had nearly a million people and was the sixth largest city in the country.

But, the gradual de-industrialization and outsourcing of Rust Belt jobs accelerated in the 70s and 80s to gut the local economy’s manufacturing base. Plus “white flight” caused large numbers of Clevelanders to flee to the suburbs or the Sunbelt. In the 80s, President Ronald Reagan broke the union in the air traffic controllers strike and that began a decades long decline in the role of labor unions. Cleveland’s blue collar work force was decimated and the city’s population shrank by two-thirds to only a little over 300,000 now.

So, will this championship turn the city’s fortunes around overnight? No, that won’t happen. Cleveland will still be the butt of jokes for comics and late night TV show hosts. And income and housing prices will still be depressed and the crime and drug problems faced by most big cities will continue.

But, most of us in Northeast Ohio and Cleveland are feeling a little better these days. We’ve seen that dedicated group of people can overcome great obstacles and succeed. That’s a message for all of us.

At the victory rally at the end of the parade, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said:” Success will come when it is time.” It may not be time for Cleveland and Northeast Ohio yet, but the success of the Cavs and the good feelings the whole region feels now should make the wait a little less painful.