RICHARD F. WINTER: 1937-2025
 

 
Richard F. Winter, long-time editor of the Chronicle Foreign Mails section and the man who made transatlantic covers accessible to a generation of collectors, died at his home in Colfax, North Carolina, on March 13. He was 87 years old, suffering from cancer.
 

The middle of three brothers and known universally by his nickname, “Dick” Winter was born in Patterson, New Jersey, in 1937. He grew up in Freeport, Long Island, where he achieved exceptional grades in middle and high school, winning numerous awards and scholarships. In his early teens, as a foot courier in Manhattan, he discovered that by running his route he could deliver parcels ahead of schedule and pocket the subway fare.
 

In 1955 he earned an appointment at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he exceled academically and on the cross-country team. His selection by his teammates as cross-country captain made him the first second-year midshipman (or “youngster”) ever to be named a team captain, and the first midshipman ever to serve as a team captain for three consecutive years.
 

After graduation in 1959 he served as a naval officer for 27 years, 19 of them at sea, achieving the rank of captain. He served on the guided missile destroyer USS Dahlgren during the Cuban missile crisis. In 1963 he was persuaded by the legendary Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, to “volunteer” for the elite nuclear submarine program Rickover was developing as a deterrent in the cold war with the Soviet Union.
 

Dick went on to serve on the Tecumseh, a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine armed with nuclear warheads, followed by four years commanding the James K. Polk, another nuclear-powered missile submarine.
 

The Smithsonian’s publication in 1971 of George Hargest’s History of Letter Post Communication Between the United States and Europe, the first deeply researched study of classic-era transatlantic mail, sparked collector interest in transatlantic covers and the markings they bore. Frequently these markings were applied according to the nationality of the ship that carried them. Collectors began a fragmented quest to learn steamship departure and arrival dates from ports in England, France and the U.S.
 

Enter Dick Winter. In the fall of 1972, someone gave Dick an 1865 stampless cover from New York to Paris, a small lady’s envelope with half a dozen indecipherable markings. Intrigued, Dick embarked on what became a life-long quest, first to decipher and then to explain to others the uses and meaning of the postal markings on transatlantic covers.
 

In 1978, when he was assigned to shore duty at the Pentagon, he had the time to do some serious research—and build the basis for a retirement career as one of America’s preeminent postal historians. Initially, Dick’s research involved the study of foreign rates, the postal treaties that created them, and the steamships that enabled them. In 1979, working largely at the Library of Congress, he began assembling sailing data, laboriously sifting through microfilm and microfiche newspaper notices. He worked alone at first, then got involved in the Chronicle, and collaborated with other scholar-collectors, most notably Walter Hubbard of London, who had been doing similar research work on transatlantic arrivals and departure dates in England.
 

Hubbard and Winter never met face-to-face. They were introduced through the mails by Susan McDonald, then general editor of the Chronicle. The two corresponded extensively, assembling and arranging the information that would become North American Mail Sailings, 1840-75. This 420-page compendium of sailing data, postmark tracings and other salient information, published by the Classics Society in 1988, would soon become the standard reference for students, collectors and exhibitors of transatlantic covers—an indispensable philatelic resource.
 

By the time the transatlantic sailing book was published, Dick was an internationally esteemed writer, researcher, speaker, collector and exhibitor of maritime postal history and transatlantic mail. He was for many years editor of the Chronicle’s Foreign Mails section (succeeding Charles Starnes, who had succeeded Hargest).
 

In the years that followed. Dick completed his magisterial Understanding Transatlantic Mail, explaining virtually all the markings, U.S. and foreign, to be found on transatlantic covers. This massive work (more than 1,000 pages) was published in two volumes by the American Philatelic Society in 2006. And he dropped the last shoe with North Atlantic Non-Contract Steamship Sailings, 1838-1875, created with his friend and collaborator John Barwis and published by the APS in 2023.
 

During his long and highly productive “retirement,” Dick served the Classics Society as director, vice president and president. He wrote almost 80 articles for the Chronicle, edited countless others, and contributed mightily and largely anonymously, to the analysis and study of foreign mail covers.
 

Dick was always willing to share his encyclopedic knowledge, and he mentored countless collectors. He spent hours each day answering questions from collectors about often obscure and very difficult to understand covers. In addition to building a huge philatelic reference library, he kept meticulous records, including postal history and postal marking census data, which he readily shared.
 

In recent years Dick was instrumental in compiling and creating an on-line database of North Carolina postal markings that is more exhaustive than any then-existing state database. He was Vice Chairman of the North Carolina Postal History Commission, and President of the North Carolina Postal History Society and much involved with the Society journal. He directed that his entire library and research files be donated to the APRL so they would be available to other collectors in the future.
 

His scholarship and his other work for the stamp community was well recognized. He won most of the awards given by the Classics Society (some several times) including the Distinguished Philatelist Award. He won the APS’ Luff Award for Distinguished Philatelic Research, the Lichtenstein Award of the Collectors Club of New York and the Smithsonian Philatelic Achievement Award. In 2008 he signed the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Additionally, he served as a Trustee of the Philatelic Foundation, as a member of the National Postal Museum’s Council of Philatelists, and as a member of the International Association of Philatelic Experts.
 

For those who knew him personally, his smile could brighten a room, and his enthusiasm was infectious. He will be well remembered by stamp friends, classmates, and neighbors at River Landing, the North Carolina retirement community where he lived since 2012. He is survived by his wife, Gretchen Van Osdell Winter, two sons and four grandchildren.
 

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be sent to the Richard F. Winter special collection room, American Philatelic Society Research Library, 100 Match Factory Place, Bellefonte, PA 16823.
 

Farewell Dick…we wish you fair winds, a following sea, and covers to analyze. –M.L.
 
The Chronicle of U.S. Classic Postal Issues, Volume 77, No 2. May 2025