STAMP HONORS ‘WORLD’S BEST LETTER-WRITER’
Elder former president Bush celebrated with ‘Forever’ commemorative postage
STATION — Several hundred letters a month marking military retirements. Approximately 149,700 congratulatory letters to Eagle Scouts. Roughly 43,500 letters for births, weddings, birthdays and anniversaries.
Such was the volume of mail that left George H.W. Bush’s office in Houston in the years after his presidency ended in January 1993. And that didn’t include countless letters sent to family, friends and others he met.
The late president’s prolific correspondence lent special meaning to a ceremony Wednesday dedicating the newly issued George H.W. Bush commemorative “forever” postage stamp. Hundreds gathered for the event at the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center, watching as a giant replica of the stamp was unveiled in sweeping fashion on stage.
“He was indeed the world’s best letter-writer,” former Chief of Staff Jean Becker told a 600-seat auditorium filled with volunteers, staff and admirers of the 41st U.S. president.
Bush, who died in November, seven months after his beloved wife, Barbara, chose the portrait on the stamp. It depicts him with a slight smile and bright eyes, based on a photograph taken
for Texas Monthly.
The photo was published in 1997 with a story about the dedication of his presidential library, where the attendees gathered Wednesday. Bush is buried behind the campus.
The ceremony fell on what would have been his 95th birthday. The stamp was a “most awesome birthday present,” his grandson Pierce Bush said. (Bush’s grandchildren plan to skydive Saturday in honor of the late president’s birthday tradition.)
“In my calculation, there is perhaps no President George H.W. Bush without the United States Postal Service,” the younger Bush said, “and so this tribute today is especially fitting.”
Sometimes criticized for difficulty with public speaking, Bush never struggled to express himself through letters, the younger Bush recalled. He developed an early respect for the craft, censoring outgoing correspondence in the military.
Reading those letters helped Bush learn about life, love and heartbreak, Pierce Bush said. He carried those insights for a lifetime, sharing pieces of himself, too. Later, his own letters were published as a memoir.
Bush might have felt wary of the attention lavished on him Wednesday morning, said Warren Finch, director of the presidential library and museum.
But it was attention well deserved for a man with a profound dedication to public service and a penchant for sending mail, speakers said.
In the audience was Linda Casey Poepsel, Bush’s director of correspondence in Houston, who remembered how special her job had been. She learned about writing from Bush, she said, and finds her own writing now sounds like his.
“He just had a beautiful way of expressing himself,” she said — along with an immense vocabulary.
Office volunteers sorted through all sorts of requests. Among the volunteers was 78year-old Lorelei Sullivan, also attending the ceremony.
Sullivan bought several stamped envelopes, officially marked with black ink that displayed the city and date, making it an official collectors item.
At a post office in Houston’s Tanglewood neighborhood, near where the Bushes lived, Douglas Waiter bought a sheet of Bush stamps Wednesday. He had seen that morning that they were now for sale.
The postal service receives around 30,000 recommendations for stamps each year, which a committee whittles down to around 30.
Every deceased president has been featured on a stamp, a tradition that dates to 1847, said Robert Duncan, chairman of the board of governors for the U.S. Postal Service.
“And it appropriately continues here today with President George Herbert Walker Bush,” Duncan said.
Blue-bordered cards were sent all over America by the president, the postal service’s “best-ever customer,” said longtime aide Chase Untermeyer.
The notes, which often contained just two or three heartfelt, handwritten lines, brought smiles and gratitude, Untermeyer said. Quite a few in the crowd had one.
Untermeyer instructed the crowd to give the strategy a try.
“Oh,” he said, “and don’t forget to put this handsome stamp on the envelope.”