"Loretta never married and didn't renew her 1972 license but remained a farm girl until 1991." - from the 2015 Ensor Park and Museum promotional video written and narrated by Larry Woodworth, W0HXS
After becoming associated with the operation of Ensor Park and Museum in Olathe in the early 2000s, museum manager and Santa Fe Trail Amateur Radio Club member Larry Woodworth discovered that Loretta Ensor, 9UA/W9UA, who never left the family farm where she and her older brother Marshall, 9BSP/W9BSP, were raised, was a stamp collector. A philatelist, if you will.
Larry happened to share that 'tidbit' with me several weeks ago when I was out at the eight-acre complex one afternoon to have a look around, then, largely blaming himself, he went on to lament the lack of attention Loretta had received overall in the latest color brochure that had been produced to let the general public know about Ensor Park and Museum and what visitors can expect to see there upon their arrival at the place.
A co-founder of the Young Ladies Radio League, which celebrated its 80th birthday last year, Loretta is mentioned three times in the brochure. Once in connection with the award-winning winter radio lessons her brother presented over a 12-year period prior to World War II, once in connection with the farm, a dairy farm, which she pretty much ran by herself starting in 1940, and once in connection with the creation of the museum. Her collection of stamps, those little pieces of paper with flags, faces, birds, buildings and what have you on them she gradually accumulated over the years? Not a word.
In any event, the one stamp any amateur radio operator should have in his or her collection is the five-cent Amateur Radio stamp that was issued by the U.S. Postal Service in December of 1964, 55 years ago last month, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the American Radio Relay League. This is the stamp you saw at the beginning of this story, the image there courtesy of www.arago.si.edu.
The stamp was first issued in Anchorage, Alaska, America's 49th state having been the scene of a devastating earthquake just nine months earlier. "When telephonic communications were disrupted during a recent earthquake in Alaska, it was the hams who made contact with worried friends and relatives," then Postmaster General John A. Gronouski was quoted as saying in an ARRL 'flier' promoting amateur radio timed to coincide with the issuance of the stamp.
In its description of the stamp, Arago notes, "It was in Alaska that 'hams' wrote another chapter in a long public service record by maintaining communications following an earthquake." And not to be outdone by the online resource site devoted to philately, eBay tells prospective stamp-buyers that these stamps "were issued from Anchorage, Alaska, for it was in Alaska that the 'hams' provided a much needed public service by maintaining communications following the 1964 earthquake."
According to Arago, the stamp was designed by Emil J. Willett, who apparently wasn't a ham, and "portrays a radio broadcast wave and a portion of a radio dial." Born in Vermont, Willett died in 1969 at the age of 56 and in the first paragraph of his obituary, which appeared in the July 24, 1969 issue of The Hartford (Conn.) Courant, his designing of the Amateur Radio stamp is mentioned. The obit went on to report that Willett was a 1930 graduate of Vermont's Barre Art School and a 1940 graduate of Norwich University School of Engineering in Northfield, Vt., and that in 1960 he received national recognition for his design of an engine for Pratt & Whitney Aircraft in East Hartford, Conn.
According to eBay, the Postal Service issued a total of 122,230,000 Amateur Radio stamps.
According to Arago, there were approximately 250,000 hams in the U.S. in 1964.