It's wonderful to see a gesture of loyalty towards an amateur who played a major role in educating many around him. Today we remember "Mr. Tiny".<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first face I saw when I first arrived at the American Numismatic Society headquarters a few years ago was that of Dan Tiny, or "Mr. Tiny," as he liked to be called. He was a huge man (by the way, the word "tiny" in English means "tiny," which is the first indication of how jovial the man was!), with a thick beard, wearing denim overalls that matched his bulk, and a small bowler hat on his head. He was standing in front of the exit of Colorado Springs Airport and shouted when he saw me, "You must be one of those numismatic lunatics! Get in, and I'll take you to the Society headquarters!" To this day, I don't know how Tiny deduced that I was a coin collector, and I never dared to ask him! During the flight, he started chatting with me with innocent enthusiasm that put me at ease. I told him that I was from Australia, that I was Egyptian, and that I loved collecting Arab coins. He gave me a warm welcome, assuring me that I would thoroughly enjoy the Numismatic Summer Conference, and I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the morning of the second day, I found Tiny in the same appearance and clothes - which I later realized were his trademark - driving a small white car of the kind we usually find on golf courses and taking a number of people to the restaurant for breakfast. He shouted his greetings to me as if he had run into a dear friend and asked me if I had found my stay comfortable. Then he offered to take me to the restaurant, but I apologized to him that the matter was "not worth it," but he insisted in a way that made me suspect that the man had Upper Egyptian origins!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the following days, I learned that Tiny was the dynamo of the summer conference. On the first day of the events, he drove the association's bus between the airport and headquarters on shuttle trips back and forth. Every morning, he drove the small car to transport the older members to the restaurant and study halls. He was also a professor of hobo coin carving and taught a very enjoyable course on this art of carving, which spread in America during the economic depression of the 1930s. On top of all this, he was a volunteer of effort, time, and money for the canteen, so much so that they jokingly called it \u201cTiny's Canteen\u201d!<\/p>\n\n\n\n