Walter Breen
| Walter H. Breen | |
|---|---|
| Born | Walter H. Breen September 5, 1928 San Antonio, Texas, United States |
| Died | April 27, 1993 (aged 64) Chino, California, United States |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | United States |
| Genre | Fantasy, science fiction, science fantasy, historical fantasy |
Walter H. Breen (September 5, 1928 – April 27, 1993) was an American writer and convicted child sex offender. He is known among coin collectors for writing Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins. "Breen numbers", from his encyclopedia, are widely used to attribute varieties of coins. He is also known for activity in the science fiction fan community and for his writings in defense of pederasty.
Breen was born in San Antonio, Texas, the son of Walter Henry Breen and Mary Helena (Nellie) Brown Mehl. He spent the first several years of his life in Texas with his parents. At the time they met, both of Walter's parents were married to other people and living next door to each other in Parkersburg, WV. Walter's father changed his name from Walter H. Green to Breen after abandoning his wife and children to run away with Walter's mother. Later in life, Breen persistently denied that they were his birth parents and claimed to have been adopted by them as a foundling child. In reminiscences he spoke of being raised in a variety of "institutional and foster settings." The 1940 census shows young Breen living in a Catholic orphanage in West Virginia, with his (by then) divorced mother living as a housekeeper in a Catholic church rectory less than two miles away. Walter's father was by that time living with another woman in Chicago; for a while after their separation his mother resumed her maiden name and young Walter went by the name William Brown.
Breen strove to distinguish himself academically from a young age, attending a Catholic high school in Wheeling, West Virginia, and continued excelling academically throughout his postsecondary education. After being declared unfit for service by the Army Air Force in April 1946, Breen was accepted that October with a recorded IQ of 144; following a severe beating, he was honorably discharged that December. During his recovery, he read voluminously about rare coins and initiated correspondence with various members of the numismatics community, renewing his involvement in a hobby in which he had been actively engaged a few years earlier. Alternatively, Breen claimed that a severe head injury suffered in a World War II plane crash led to the development of his photographic memory.
...
Wikipedia