Jerry A. McCoy

Jerry A. McCoy has loved American history since his father introduced him to stamp collecting at the age of eight in Lorain, Ohio. Determined to live in Washington, DC, he moved there in 1978, earning a B.A. in Visual Communications from The American University and a M.S. in Library Science from The Catholic University of America.

McCoy became fascinated with the history of "hometown" Washington when he first patronized the DC Public Library’s Washingtoniana Division and fell in love with its special collections of local DC history. Since 2000 he has been a librarian and archivist there and at the Georgetown Neighborhood Library’s Peabody Room, a special collections of Georgetown history.

In 1992 McCoy moved to downtown Silver Spring, MD and immediately delved into researching his new community’s history. In 1993 he located Silver Spring’s 1937 post office mural, long placed in storage, and with the Friends of the Silver Spring Library raised $25,000 for its restoration. The mural was rededicated in 1997 and today hangs in the Silver Spring Library.

The next year McCoy founded the Silver Spring Historical Society, whose mission is to preserve the community’s local history. This was followed in 2003 with co-production of the PBS documentary Silver Spring: Story of an American Suburb and publication of two local history books, Historic Silver Spring in 2005 and Downtown Silver Spring in 2010.