Is there anything interesting to say about a stamp honoring the 150th anniversary of Ohio becoming a state and a stamp honoring the 100th anniversary of when the Washington Territory was created?

That’s the question I’ve been pondering this evening as I’ve been getting ready to write about the two stamps, which, since they were both issued on March 2, 1953, are, collectively, today’s #stampoftheday.

Should I riff on the former, for example, by telling the story about how my parents bought by geography-impaired older sister a wooden puzzle with all the US states and how she tried to put the Buckeye State in upside down, creating, my father joked, the new state of “Oiho”?

Or maybe I should tell how I got my start in journalism via a phone call made from a payphone near Snoqualmie, Washington in August of 1981? I had been freelancing for The Tab, a new weekly newspaper but during the summer doldrums they weren’t using freelancers. They were, however, in the process of hiring reporters for their planned new papers in Cambridge and downtown Boston. Told that I should call in two weeks, I took a cheap flight to visit an old friend (and a young women I liked) in Seattle. I went backpacking for a few days in the Alpine Lakes in the Central Cascades, timing my return in time to call in exactly two weeks. The editor later told me he hired me because he figured anyone who wanted that job so badly that he’d call from a payphone in the Cascades deserved a shot.

Or maybe I should write about the strange world of stamp-related politics circa early 1953. Newly-elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in keeping with traditions of the time, had appointed Arthur Summerfield, the chairman of the Republican Party as Postmaster General. Summerfield, who owned one of the largest GM auto dealerships in Michigan; had twice run unsuccessfully to be that state’s governor, and who as chairman of that state’s delegation at the 1952 Republican convention, had played a key role in securing the nomination for Eisenhower.

As Kent Stiles, the long-time New York Times philately columnist noted just before Eisenhower was inaugurated, “more than a new Postmaster General realizes, some of his problems will be directly associated with philately.” Most notably, Stiles warned, Summerfield would have to respond to pressure to issue special stamps, which came “from business, professional, civic, political, and sometimes religious sources, not excluding philatelic organizations and definitely including Senators and Representatives eager to please constituents.”

Summerfield had a little time because his predecessor, who dealt with the requests in consultation with leaders of the House and Senate Postal Committees, had queued up a few stamps for early 1953, including the Ohio and Washington stamps.

But Summerfield would have to choose among the many proposed stamps, which included ones honoring:

• The 75th anniversary of the founding of the American Bar Association
• The semi-centennial of National Rural Letter Carriers Association
• Henry Holcomb Bennett, the journalist who wrote the patriotic song, “The Flag Goes By” (on a stamp that would be issued on Flag Day)
• Tom Shiras, a newspaper publisher who had successfully advocated for the new Bull Shoals Dam and Norfolk Dam, both in Arkansas
• School teachers
• The 75th anniversary of the New York Herald Tribune’s Fresh Air Fund
• The memory of Babe Ruth (who had died in 1948).
• Col. David (Mickey) Marcus, the former New York City Commissioner of Corrections who became an Israeli military commander and was killed in Jerusalem in 1948
• The third National Boy Scout Jamboree, which was scheduled for that summer.

Of all these, the only one issued by the Post Office in 1953 was the stamp honoring the ABA.

Summerfield ultimately served as Postmaster General for all 8 years of Eisenhower’s presidency. While he worked to make the Post Office more efficient, he was perhaps best known for trying to keep allegedly obscene materials out of the mail, particularly his 1959 decision making it illegal to send D. H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” through the mail.

“Any literary merit the book may have is far outweighed by the pornographic and smutty passages,” he said at the time. Ironically, this pronouncement greatly spurred legal sales in stores and the book shot to the top of the best-seller list. Moreover, about a month later, a federal judge overruled the Post Office, ruling that the book wasn’t obscene and noting “the Postmaster General has no special competence…on this subject which qualifies him to render an informed judgment.” The Post Office appealed but finally, in June 1960, the Justice Department announced it would not ask the Supreme Court to reinstate the Post Office ban.

Summerfield also was behind one of the Post Office’s odder initiatives, promising also in 1959, that “before man reaches the moon your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or to Australia by guided missiles.” (What could possibly go wrong with that?) The first and only time this was tried was on June 8, 1959, when the USS Barbero, a Navy submarine in waters off Florida, launched a Regulus cruise missile stuffed with 3,000 letters towards a naval air station about 100 miles away. Needless to say, the idea didn’t catch on.

There you have it. I think my sister knows where Ohio is. I got a job as a newspaper reporter that, in retrospect, set me on my way. Babe Ruth finally appeared on a stamp in 1983 but Mickey Marcus never did. And you can get Lady Chatterley’s Lover by mail but it won’t be sent to you by missile. (Amazon, however, might be working on a drone.)

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, and work for peace.