This year’s recipient was born in 1952, the son a long-time collector of worldwide forgeries. While with his father in France in 1964 our honoree was “trapped” into the hobby and quite naturally began collecting both French and U.S. issues.
His current interests are U.S. Civil War through-the-lines mail, Franco-Prussian War Siege mail of 1870-1871 and mail routes through San Francisco. He has been the recipient of such prestigious philatelic exhibiting awards as The Grand Prix International at Luxembourg 98 and The Grand Prix National at Paris 99 (the first non-Frenchman ever to win the award).
Our recipient is a Trustee of the Philatelic Foundation, a Fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society of London and a corresponding member of the Academie de Philatelie and a member of The France & Colonies Philatelic Society, The United States Philatelic Classics Society, The Confederate Stamp Alliance and numerous other philatelic organizations.
For his monograph, Post Office Mail Sent Across the Lines at the Start of the American Civil War, May to June 1861, this years United States Philatelic Classics Society¹s Stanley Ashbrook Cup is awarded to Steven C. Walske.
He is the section editor for the Chronicle for the 1869 period and serves as a member of the executive committee of the Philatelic Foundation’s Board of trustees. At the helm of one of America’s leading auction houses, he has hammered down in excess of a quarter of a billion dollars worth of philatelic material.
For his research and outstanding treatise, The City Despatch Post, 1842-1852 Issues, A Study of America’s First and Most Versatile Stamp-Producing Plate, published by Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries, the Society is proud to present Scott Trepel with The Chase Cup.
This year’s recipient is a Kansas man who began collecting stamps as a child only to set them aside as he entered high school, college and then family and professional life. Returning to the hobby as his family matured, he began to collect pre-1940 classics and BNA. Retiring in the early 1990’s our honoree’s interests changed from stamps to postal history in general and mourning covers in the specific.
Our recipient was frustrated and disappointed at how little was known about the use of mourning covers, which flourished during the classic period of the second half of the 19th Century. Undaunted, he began researching the subject himself. Acquiring thousands of actual covers and numerous illustrations of other covers from around the globe, our winner spent ten years authoring and typing (with his own two fingers) the manuscript for his 353 page volume – much of which is devoted to the cultural and postal history of such letters in the United States during the Classic Era.
For Mourning Covers: The Cultural and Postal History of Letters Edged in Black, this year’s United States Philatelic Classics Society Elliot Perry Cup is awarded to Ernest A. Mosher.
Charles Peterson at right receiving the Award from Wade Saadi.
His part in philatelic literature is as vast as any has ever has ever been. For 25 years, he was president of the FIP’s Philatelic Literature Commission and is currently an FIP director. He was a member of the Board of Vice-Presidents for the American Philatelic Society. For the American Philatelic Research Library, he served as Treasurer and is currently a Trustee and its President, intimately involved in and a driving force behind the acquisition of the Match Factory and the move to it.
He is a signer of the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists, a recipient of the Luff Award and the Willard Award.
He has received the Distinguished Philatelist Award from our Society and served subsequently as chair of that selection committee. He is currently a member of our Board of Directors. Since 1993, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of the award winning, The Chronicle of U.S. Classic Postage Issues. For this, the Society is proud to present Charles Peterson with the Brookman Cup.
The recipient of the Mortimer L. Neinken Award for the 2003 volume is Gerald L. Moss for his article on “Steel Used to Print the First Two Issues of U.S. Stamps,” which appeared in three installments in Chronicle No. 197-199 (Feb., March and Aug.2003), pp. 46-54, 122-41 and 181-84.
It was not until the 1960s that documentary evidence showed the 1847 and 1851 U.S. stamp issues to have been produced by steel plates, rather than copper. It has taken until now, through the author’s approach from a metallurgical prospective, to shed any light on the nature of the steel used for those plates. Starting from the finished products and working backward, Mr. Moss was able to identify the type steel used and the manufacturing processes followed. Among other conclusions, his analysis points to different metallurgical properties in the plates used for the two issues, resulting in less stability (and greater likelihood of deterioration) in the 1851 issue. An interesting presentation of considerable interest to students of these two issues, and one fully deserving of the Neinken Award.
The recipient of the Susan M. McDonald Award for the 2003 volume is Vernon R. Morris Jr., M.D. for his article on “What is a ŒDrop Letter’ and a “Drop Dead Letter’,” which appeared inChronicle #199 (August 2003), pages 59-69 and #200 (November 2003), pages 247-68.
Drop letter mail is a complex, oftentimes confusing and misidentified subject. Thus Dr. Morris’ thorough examination of drop letter rates and usages, from Colonial times through the mid 1860s, is most welcome. His article traces the successive changes in legislation, with commendable sensitivity to the social and economic conditions that engendered and accompanied those changes. The illustrations are particularly well chosen examples of what was and what was not a drop letter for a particular period. In short, Dr. Morris has given readers a much-needed comprehensive guide to a significant aspect of our postal history, quite deserving of the Susan M. McDonald Award.
The Distinguished Philatelist Award
He has been collecting stamps since the age of 11, and is recognized today as a specialist and expert in modern U.S. stamps and postal history, including but by no means limited to the coil issues. His knowledge has led him to several major finds, among them the unique horizontal pair of the U.S. 1910 3¢ deep violet imperforate coil stamp. He is a nationally qualified philatelic and literature judge, internationally qualified in philatelic literature, and a member of the APS Expert Committee. As the APS Board of Directors liaison to the Expert Committee, he introduced the use of forensic science in philatelic expertizing and was instrumental in obtaining funding for purchase of the Committee’s new equipment.
As an exhibitor, Ken Lawrence was welcomed for his ground-breaking and highly popular Walt Disney exhibit, titled “The Sun Never Sets on Mickey Mouse.” He currently maintains an exhibit of Holocaust mail, “The Nazi Scourge,” which is frequently shown on college campuses, at community centers and in libraries. His exhibits have won awards at every level from national bronze to gold and platinum, and to international vermeil with felicitations and large vermeil, as well as a wide range of special prizes.
Ken Lawrence is probably best known to the hobby as a writer. He served six years as editor of The Philatelic Communicator, quarterly journal of the APS Philatelic Writers Unit 30, and raised the attention-getting quotient of that publication to a level never attained before or since. He had a regular column inThe American Philatelist until 1999, one of the most well read and clipped columns in that journal; he is now a regular monthly columnist for Scott Stamp Monthly. He has published articles in most of the major U.S. philatelic publications, including three submissions to the Congress Book, and in more than 20 stamp specialty publications world-wide. For seven years he wrote the “Stamps and Stamp Collecting” articles for two major encyclopedia yearbooks. For these and other contributions as philatelic author, editor and contributor he was elected to the APS Writers Hall of Fame in 1998.
He also serves. At the local level, he had two terms as vice-president and two as president of the Jackson (Mississippi) Philatelic Society. He was APS Director-at-Large, 1991-93; APS Secretary, 1993-95; chairman of the APS Board of Vice-Presidents from 1995-97 and is currently serving another two-year term as APS Vice-President. He is a member of the APRL Board of Trustees. Ken has taught full courses and electives at the APS/Pennsylvania State University summer seminars on philately, presented judges’ accreditation seminars on philatelic literature and traditional philately, and has taught seminars in specialized U.S. stamp collecting at APS and BIA (now United States Stamp Society) annual meetings. He has been an active member of countless national and specialist society committees, boards and ad hoc groups.
In recognition of his exceptional and diversified accomplishments, and the strong positive impact he continues to have on U.S. philately, the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society is pleased to welcome Ken Lawrence as a Distinguished Philatelist.
Herb Trenchard first became a stamp collector in 1944, as a high school student, and was encouraged by the school librarian who gave him the copies of Stamps magazine received at the library. A true collector, Herb still has some of them. During those years, he bought his stamps from local New Orleans dealers, including the Weill Brothers.
College years brought an end to active collecting, but he continued to receive the many auction catalogues, which in those days were sent free to any requestor. In 1955, he was attracted to the sale of the Caspary collection, and attended the first auctions. While the great rarities and important pieces were out of his reach, he could and did get the auction catalogues, a decision which led to his determination to obtain every stamp auction catalog ever printed. He soon began buying catalogues from Sy Colby and Lou Robbins, and also visited the many New York City auctioneers of the time, many of whom gave Herb copies of their older catalogues and saved the recent ones for him. Harry Lindquist, the great philatelic editor and publisher, invariably gave Herb all the auction catalogues he’d received since Herb’s last visit, as well as a book for his library.
His horizons expanded rather quickly, and he began acquiring British and European auction catalogues. His professional work as a theoretical physicist took him to Europe frequently, where he visited the auction houses and stamp dealers and added many important older catalogues to his collection.
In 1961, following a term in the Army, Herb and his family moved to University Park, Maryland. That led to one of the most significant events in Herb’s philatelic life, a close relationship with George Turner, one of the greatest of U.S. philatelic bibliophiles. Through George Turner, Herb became involved in organized philately at George Turner’s urging Herb began what has become a long parade of philatelic writings documenting philatelic history.
As of 1975, Herb’s auction catalog holdings totaled over 75,000 items and he has continued actively adding to it since then. This enormous and unique database has been of invaluable help to countless collectors, dealers and expertisers concerned about questions of provenance, condition or other circumstances relating to philatelic items which may have been on the market in earlier years.
In 1984, Herb started a collection of material related to the history of stamp collecting, which he described as containing “anything connected with stamp collecting except stamps.” That now resides in over 500 albums, and in numerous boxes, file cabinets and book cases. He has drawn on both of his major collections for articles on a wide range of philatelic subjects, to include:
- Auction Catalogs
- Philatelic Exhibitions
- Famous Collectors and their Collections
- Early Philatelic History in America
- U.S. Locals
- Forgers and Forgeries
- Early Philatelists who Impacted U.S. Philately
- First Day Ceremonies
- the Famous Americans issue of 1940
- Special Areas of Postal History
- The St. Louis Bears
- Ionian Islands
His articles have appeared in nearly every major U.S. philatelic journal including The American Philatelist, the Chronicle, Penny Post, Philatelic Literature Review, Collectors Club Philatelist, Postal History Journal, Linn’s and First Days.
Herb Trenchard has served in all offices of the Washington Philatelic Society, including the presidency. He was a member of the Board of Directors of SIPEX (the 1961 U.S. international exhibition), and on the NAPEX Board from 1960-1980. He is a current member of the Board of the American Ceremony Program Society. He has been a member of the APRL Board of Trustees since 1986, and is currently the Vice-President of that board. His unique qualifications as a philatelic historian have been put to the service of various philatelic organizations. Most noteworthy are his official role since 1993 as the APS Historian, and his membership since 1973 on the APS Hall of Fame Committee, which he currently chairs. He has also helped organize the archives and prepare the histories of a number of philatelic societies, including the Baltimore Philatelic Society, the Washington Philatelic Society and the Wisconsin Federation of Stamp Clubs.
If all this were not enough, for the past ten years Herb has been an active volunteer at the National Postal Museum, serving as advisor and assistant to the NPM branch of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries.
Herb Trenchard’s contributions to philately have been recognized by many awards and accolades, the most significant of which include designation as a Fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society, London; the John Luff Award, in 1992, for Outstanding Service to the APS; and election to the Hall of Fame of the APS Writers Unit. It is most appropriate that we also honor Herbert A. Trenchard today by enrolling him as a Distinguished Philatelist.
