Ayn Rand U.S. Postage Stamp Ceremony

On April 22, the U.S. Postal Service introduced the Ayn Rand postage stamp at a festive, jam-packed ceremony in New York City. It was a wonderful, if unexpected, recognition of Rand's achievements, and TOC wanted to be part of the event.

In the week prior to the event, TOC's executive director, David Kelley, wrote an op-ed piece, "The Stamp of Greatness," which discussed the life and ideas of Ayn Rand. Explaining Rand's enduring success, Kelley wrote: "The characters she created are memorable as men and women of the mind, as producers, and as individualists of towering initiative and integrity, values they embody in a purer, more intense form than we see in everyday life." (For a complete text of Kelley's article, read it online.) The Cato Institute distributed this op-ed to nearly two hundred newspapers nationally, and Navigator is interested in hearing from anyone who saw the piece printed in his local paper.

© USPS 1998

For the Postage Stamp Mega-Event, where the ceremony was held, IOS director of development and special projects, Bob Bidinotto, designed and arranged for an institute information booth, and with over one hundred and fifty other booths competing for attention, Bob pulled out all the stops. Three eight-foot display panels were topped by a large sign that proclaimed: "AYN RAND: THE STAMP OF GREATNESS" — with the institute's name and logo below. The colorful display featured a large framed photo of Ayn Rand, surrounded by blown-up photos and press clips from IOS events; quotations from Rand and Thomas Jefferson; and a table-top arrangement of The Objectivism Store literature. Over a four-day period, the people at the booth distributed hundreds of copies of TOC literature and collected many new names for the institute's mailing list.

Many visitors said that the TOC booth was the most impressive at the entire show. The producers of the U.S. Postal Service's cable television program came by to film the booth and its contents. Meanwhile, the American Stamp Dealers Association, which co-hosted the event, produced a souvenir card of the stamp, referring by name to an IOS summary of Rand's philosophy. IOS also has the proud distinction of being the first group to have made public use of the Ayn Rand stamp.

David Kelley meets with visitors at the IOS booth.

Just before midnight on April 15, Bob Bidinotto and TOC Sponsor Linda Abrams entered the Poughkeepsie post office, where Bob ("dutifully") filed his income tax returns. Suddenly, Linda noticed that in the philatelic center's wall racks were filled with Ayn Rand stamps, a full week before the official release date. The next morning, April 16, the TOC staff rushed out and bought a large quantity of the stamps. That same day, the institute mailed over a thousand postcards bearing the stamp to New York-area members and friends — inviting them, ironically, to the April 22 "First Day of Release" ceremony! If you received this postcard — with its Ayn Rand stamp canceled six days before its official release — you have a philatelic treasure.

On behalf of TOC, the staff would like to thank those people who served as volunteers at the institute's booth: Linda Abrams, Susan Brodrick, Steve Chalfant, Jay Friedenberg, Paul Kay, Kirez Korgan, Hanah Metchis, Stan Rozenfeld, Will Thomas, and Ben Wyche.