News Archive

This year’s WESTPEX theme was California’s 175th birthday. No cake was on hand, but lots of medals were won.

 
The gold rush was started by Cheryl Ganz whose “Basel Zeppelin Posts” won the Single Frame Grand Award as well as Single-frame Large Gold, the American Helvetia Philatelic Society (AHPS) – Best Single Frame and the AHPS – Gold for Highest Point Total.
 
Alfredo Frohlich won the WESTPEX Chairperson’s Award for his Colombia – Last Classic Issue – 1866 (also Multi-frame Large Gold and Donald Dretzke Memorial Award – Best Used Stamps).
 
Multi-frame Large Gold was won by

• Albert Briggs for Domestic Rates and Uses of the United States Presidential Series (also APS Award of Excellence – 1940 – 1980 and the USSS – Statue of Freedom Award)
• Lawrence Haber for The Half-Penny (decimal) Machin (also the Collectors Club of Chicago Gold Medallion Award – Award of Merit)
• Ed and Pat Laveroni for The Evolution of Early California Mail (also San Francisco Pacific Philatelic Society – Margaret Munda Memorial of Merit).

 
Multi-frame Gold was won by Mark Horne for U.S. Inverts and Select World Rarities Under 100 Extant and by Bob Crossman for Butterfield’s Overland Mail Company (also the AAPE – Novice Award).
 
Multi-frame Large Vermeil was won by John Schorn for The 21c Giannini Definitive of 1973 and Thomas Richards for Mary Pickford (America’s Sweetheart) (also PSE Award – It’s Not Just Stamps).
 
Multi-frame Vermeil was won by Dr. Bruce Wasserman for Charles Dickinson, Founder of Dickinson Airline and the First-Which Was Their Second To Last-Day of CAM 9 Service From Chicago to Minneapolis-St Paul in 1926 and John Kofranek for “All Together Now” The First Swiss Issued Stamps 1850-1854.

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

The 2025 edition of the Garfield-Perry March Party took place 14-16 March at its usual venue in Strongsville, Ohio – just outside Cleveland.
 

Multi-frame Grand went to Alfredo Frohlich for “United States of Colombia 1868-1881” (also Multi-frame Large Gold and the Dale Pulver Award for Best Foreign Exhibit).
 

Multi-frame Reserve Grand went to Tony Dewey for “The U. S. Alphabet-Denominated Rate-Change Series 1978-1998” (also Multi-frame Large Gold; the US Stamp Society Statue of Freedom Medal; and the USSS Southgate Memorial Trophy).
 

Single-frame Grand went to Mark Schwartz for “Carrier Service at Boston: 1821-1863” (also Single-frame Large Gold; Garfield-Perry Award for Best US Exhibit; and the Garfield-Perry Award for Best Postal History Exhibit).
 

Four members won Multi-frame Large Gold for their exhibits:

• Mark Schwartz for “Independent Mail and Express Company Operations at Boston: 1843-5” (also the American Philatelic Congress Award).
• William Fort for “Pan American Airlines FAM-5 Air Mail Routes 1929-1945” (also the APS Medal of Excellence 1940-1980 and the American Airmail Society Award).
• Leonard Hartmann for “Confederate States of America: Lithographed General Issues” (also the APS Research Medal).
• John Hotchner for “The U. S. CIPEX Souvenir Sheet of 1947: Development, Production, First Days and Contemporary Use” (also the Collectors Club of Chicago Gold Medallion).

For additional members won Multi-frame Gold:

• Robert Meegan for “United States Domestic Letter Rates from the Act of 1792 to October 1, 1883”.
• David Mayo for “The U.S. 2¢ Columbian of 1893”.
• Wayne Farley for “West Virginia in the Confederacy”.
• Randolph Smith for “Civil War Washington as Seen Through the Drawings of Charles Magnus, Lithographer” (also the AAPE Creativity Award).

Finishing up the multi-frame awards, Thomas Richards won Multi-frame Vermeil for “Mary Pickford (America’s Sweetheart)”.

William Schultz won Single-frame Large Gold for “Barr-Fyke Machine Cancel – 1899 to 1901 – Westchester, PA.” (also the Machine Cancel Society Award).
 

Two members won Single-frame Gold:

• Leonard Hartmann for “Jean de Sperati Fake Stamps and Cancellations of the Confederate States of America Stamps”.
• John Hotchner for “Designing The U.S. Hummingbird Issue of 1992”.

Scott Pendleton’s “Uses of the 1902 Second Bureau 15 Cents Henry Clay” won Single-frame Large Vermeil.
 

Two members won Single-frame Vermeil:

• Kenneth Nilestuen for “The Era of the Algerine Corsairs, 1597 – 1830”.
• William Armstrong for “BALLOON MAIL Flights that failed”.

The American Philatelic Society runs a program called the Young Philatelic Leaders Fellowship (YPLF) with the aim of encouraging and developing philatelic participation. The US Philatelic Classics Society has been a co-sponsor of the YPLF since the program’s inception in 2009. The Society provides some funding and our members provide mentoring and advice to individual fellows.