The Power of a Letter - Printable Version
+- Kingston Stamp Club Community Forum (https://kingstonstampclub.ca/forum)
+-- Forum: Philatelic Discussions - Country / Region Specific Forums (https://kingstonstampclub.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=24)
+--- Forum: Worldwide -- anything else that doesn't fit (https://kingstonstampclub.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=32)
+--- Thread: The Power of a Letter (/showthread.php?tid=365)
+- Kingston Stamp Club Community Forum (https://kingstonstampclub.ca/forum)
+-- Forum: Philatelic Discussions - Country / Region Specific Forums (https://kingstonstampclub.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=24)
+--- Forum: Worldwide -- anything else that doesn't fit (https://kingstonstampclub.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=32)
+--- Thread: The Power of a Letter (/showthread.php?tid=365)
The Power of a Letter - Janet MacD - 15-05-2026
A philatelic friend gave me a gift Thursday evening and it has been the perfect medicine.
Since early April I have been struggling with a bacterial infection that wasn’t responding to any of the antibiotics doctors at Urgent Care and Emergency were sticking in the IVs. Finally, Prescription #7 - the drug used for the plague - seems to have worked, but the side effects including loss of concentration and balance, which may continue for months after the prescription has been finished, have made the philatelic activities that I love nearly impossible. I cannot read more than a few pages of a book and I have to rewind shows I am streaming because I have “lost the plot.”
But last night Hugh and I were gifted a cover with a 7 page letter. I have been studying it for almost five hours without a break. My concentration seems to have returned.
[attachment=1279]
My “philoogling” efforts are being rewarded. Studying this letter is a work in progress, but so far, I have noted:
- The “Via clipper” note handwritten in the upper left corner, and then partially covered with US censor tape - it looks like someone in the censor office carefully wrote “Via” on the tape?
- Censor number 2820 was assigned to San Francisco, a major hub for Pacific mail, Google opined.
- Given a photo of the cover, Google decided that censor 2820 was instead located in Honolulu.
- The letter travelled from Honolulu to Alameda, California in early January, 1943.
- The air mail stamp depicts a clipper ship. 20 cents was the full commercial clipper rate.
- The slogan cancel reads “Buy Defense Savings Bonds and Stamps”. I found a digitized copy of United States Postal Slogan Cancels compiled by Moe Luff and published in October 1950. It suggests this slogan was used between 1942 and 1950, but includes a sample with a postmark dated August 1941!
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3116472
The paper used is a very high quality, with light horizontal line markings at 1/8 inch intervals on the pages. The envelope has the same markings, but on a 45 degree angle. The envelope has a bright red security lining. The paper is watermarked, but I can’t make out the mark until I relocate and charge my light table.
The letter is very chatty and a delightful read, thanking friends in California for the Christmas gifts they sent, talking about the curfew and blackout rules in Honolulu, safety concerns for the writer’s young daughter, and improvising when materials for a knitting pattern could not be found locally. When the writer details the gifts she exchanged with her husband, I realized this was a wealthy correspondent. She received an electric dishwasher and is eagerly waiting for a carpenter and plumber to install it. He also gave her a diamond and sapphire ring. She gave her husband a quilt for his bed, a cow for his ranch, a mango tree and a persimmon tree.
[attachment=1280]
Mrs. Randolph Crossley was born Florence Pepperdine in 1908. She met Randolph Crossley while touring Asia with her father, and married him in 1928. (Photo from the George Pepperdine Collection: Photographs of the Pepperdine Family, 1907-1997, pepperdine.quartexcollections.com)
[attachment=1281]
I found a wonderful article entitled Randolph Crossley and His Half-Century in Hawai’i by an historian named T. Michael Holmes in The Hawaiian Journal of History, vol. 36, published in 2002. The author interviewed Crossley three times over a two year period from 2000 to 2002, beginning when Crossley was 96. Florence had passed away in 1997, after almost 70 years of marriage.
https://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/6e1d108d-7a35-4839-8a9e-07bd6062c170/content
The couple had an extraordinary life together: wealth creation; bankruptcy; a father who came into the world with nothing and wanted to leave the same way, expecting his daughters to give up any hope of inheritance so he could found a college; an almost grandmother travelling to Hawaii for the birth of her first grandchild, only to succumb to parrot fever during the journey and arrive in a coma; a daughter remembered for the muumuus she wore to PTA events in Oregon …
Some say laughter is the best medicine … but I think a good cover mystery deserves that honour!