Luetkemeyer’s Mark Twain Coin Bill Receives Final House Approval, Heads to President
Washington,
Nov 15 -
In a victory for Hannibal and all of Missouri, U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer’s (MO-9) bill to mint a Mark Twain commemorative coin today received final approval by the U.S. House of Representatives and now heads to President Obama’s desk for his signature.
“I am extremely proud that this legislation, which will help preserve Mark Twain’s legacy by enhancing his Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, is finally heading to the president’s desk and this certainly would not have been possible without the hard work of so many folks back home in Missouri,” Luetkemeyer said. “Mark Twain is an icon throughout the country and I’m honored that he is being recognized for his contributions to world literature.”
Under the legislation, the U.S. Mint will produce for a limited time, $1 silver and $5 gold coins in honor of Twain. The sale price of each coin will be calculated at the combined total of each coin’s respective face value, production and design costs, and a surcharge remitted by the U.S. Treasury to the recipient organizations, thereby costing taxpayers nothing.
Sites benefiting from the surcharge include the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, New York and the Mark Twain Project at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley, California.
The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal commemorates the childhood of a man who grew up to be one of the most recognized names in literature. Twain would eventually move to Hartford, Connecticut, where he settled down, built a house and began to work on what would become his most famous work, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
