It was on December 19, 2023 when John Bracy Love, a numismatist who was well-known across the country, went to be with his Lord. All of his loved ones were present at his residence in Whitefish, Montana, where he was at the time. During his final years, John was blind and struggled with a number of health issues; nonetheless, he maintained an optimistic attitude and a strong will, and he rarely complained, until you interrupted his Grizzlies game.
Virgil and Florence Bracy Love welcomed their son John into the world on June 6, 1936, in the city of Carbondale, Illinois. After moving to Burbank, California, when Virgil was still a young child, his family settled there and he began working at Columbia Pictures Studios. Following his graduation from John Burroughs High School in Burbank, John received a football scholarship to attend Los Angeles Valley Junior College. He went on to complete his education. After achieving a great deal of success, his squad went on to become the champions of their football league tournament in the year 1955.
John received an invitation to attend the University of Montana on a football scholarship after he graduated from high school. Although he only played football for one year, he was a member of the University of Minnesota tennis team and coached for his senior year. Phi Delta Theta was the academic fraternity that John was a part of. A bachelor’s degree in education was awarded to him by the university in 1959, when he first graduated. John met his wife of 63 years, Karla Kay Kluth, while he was attending the University of Michigan.
In the year 1960, the pair tied the knot. In the immediate aftermath of their wedding, the couple relocated to Cut Bank, Montana, where John took over management of the Orpheum Theatre Company for his mother-in-law. Over the course of more than half a century, they built their home in Cut Bank, where they brought up their children, Lisette Lee Love and John Byron Love. When John was working at the theatre, silver was the currency that people used, and he quickly became interested in silver dollars during the course of his employment there. It was at that point that he started his career in the realm of coin industry.
He established Record Coin in the year 1962. Diane Biegler was employed by him at the same time to serve as his secretary, and she is still working there to this day. Throughout the course of his career, he was a member of the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG), a lifetime member of the American Numismatic Association (ANA), and he was presented with the National Silver Dollar Roundtable Lifetime Achievement award in 1990. In addition, he was inducted into the Coin Dealer Hall of Fame of the Professional Coin Grading Services (PCGS) in 2011.
He had a passion for going to work, and he continued to do so right up until the moment he passed away. In addition to his coin company, he and Roy Roper of Twin Falls, Idaho, along with Theo Bartschi and Byron Kluth first established Interstate Amusement in Twin Falls in 1967. Over the years, the amusement park expanded to include a total of 25 movie screens. The year 2014 saw the sale of the theatres.
