By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Private Policy and Terms of Use.
The penny will be phased out.
Opinion: The disappearance of America’s smallest coin mirrors the erosion of its foundational ideals, writes John Casey.
This Memorial Day, I’m thinking about my father. A veteran, a child of the Great Depression, and the kind of man who could stretch a dollar across a week and make it feel like abundance. He was frugal, and he had his reasons. He used to tell us at Christmas that the only present he received was an orange, so we should count our blessings.
Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ+ news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter.
When we were little, I remember Dad taking my brother, my sister, and me to Dollar Bank in Pittsburgh to open our first savings accounts. We dumped jars of pennies, nickels, and dimes onto the counter. “A penny saved is a penny earned,” he’d said that day.
To me, that little copper coin carried the weight of his values, thrift, honor, patience, and purpose. As the U.S. Mint moves to eliminate the penny, it feels like we’re not just losing a coin. We’re losing the last small reminder of a simpler, steadier, more decent America.
The penny traces its American lineage back to 1793, just two years after the Bill of Rights was ratified. It has clinked in the pockets of abolitionists and farmers, soldiers and schoolteachers, suffragists and steelworkers.
And for over a century, it has borne the image of Abraham Lincoln, the president who preserved the Union and ended slavery. That’s not an accident. Lincoln was chosen in 1909, the centennial of his birth, as the first president to appear on an American coin.
He was placed not just on any coin, but on the smallest one. The humblest one. The one that multiplied in lunch counters and Sunday plates and piggy banks just like mine across generations.
To erase the penny is to erase a symbol of modest, durable American values. A nod to my father’s frugality and his fairness — of the quiet belief that even the smallest things matter.
And it’s no coincidence that the announcement about the end of the penny comes the same week Donald Trump restored racism to the White House by openly backing segregation-era rhetoric and stoking the very fires Lincoln worked to extinguish.
One president immortalized in copper for ending division, and the other bombastically resurrecting it like a ghoul from the past while he’s wrapped in gaudy gold. One fought for a more perfect union, and the other pushes for its fracture.
To me, the timing is uncanny. But maybe not accidental. Because what are we, as a people, without our symbols? Without our sense of proportion and history? And without an object that represents simplicity.
We are heading into what may be the most turbulent three years in our republic’s modern history. The courts are compromised. Conspiracy theorists emboldened. A barrage of lies, lost among themselves. What’s right? What’s wrong? What’s true?
The truths we once shared, scientific, civic, and even moral, have shattered into algorithmic kaleidoscopes, X posts, and worse, Truth Social garbage. Every fact is contested. Every motive is suspect. It’s easy to feel like we’re floating untethered, spinning away from each other in the digital void.
And now we will do it all without the quiet confidence of the Lincoln penny in our pocket.
Of course, critics will say this is meaningless. “It costs more to make a penny than it’s worth!” But so what? So does freedom. So does principle. The penny never existed because it was efficient. Think about it. It existed because it was essential. So many things, when I was growing up, seemed to be $.99 or $1.99,or $9.99. You could put down the bills and get that penny back. And it mattered.
Then, I remember many times as I got older, when it came time to accept the penny from the cashier, I’d joke callously, “Keep the change.”
The penny reminded us that no person, no matter how small, was beneath notice. That democracy, like saving, was built one cent at a time.
I wish my dad were here. He’d probably laugh at me for being sentimental over a coin. But I think, deep down, he’d understand. He knew what it meant to grow up with nothing. To make do. To find dignity in the smallest things. And he knew, better than most, that the minute we start thinking the smallest things no longer matter, we’re already bankrupt.
Voices is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. Visit Advocate.com/submit to learn more about submission guidelines. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists, and editors, and do not directly represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride.
