Stamp It a Winner

In Yosemite Valley these spring days the dogwood is blooming, water cascades over the rocks in Bridalveil Falls and wildflowers peep through the grass near the Merced River. Today there will be flags and fanfare as well at the valley post office as first-day-of-issue ceremonies are held for a new 25-cent stamp. Colorful as the Earth is on the transitional E stamp for domestic mail, it just doesn’t hold the appeal of this new flag-series stamp of Half Dome.

The stamp has been four years in the making, and Yosemite postmaster Leroy (Rusty) Rust is thrilled about it. With the help of the Yosemite-area congressman, Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Merced), Rust steered the stamp through the citizens’ advisory commission that decides who and what will show up on the nation’s postage stamps. The postmaster originally wanted the stamp to commemorate Yosemite’s 100th anniversary as a national park on Oct. 1, 1990. A commemorative stamp might have been a bigger, flashier stamp, but it also would have had a shorter life. Being part of the flag series, this stamp has an initial printing of 2.2 billion stamps and will get wider distribution.

Rust, whose father arrived in Yosemite in 1907 driving a stagecoach and had the mail contract from El Portal, has himself been the postmaster for 26 years. He hopes that now, “through philately, we’ll get the word around to come to see us” in Yosemite. For those of us who can’t do that as often as we’d like (which would be every day), now we can at least be there in spirit with each new stamp we lick.