By Richard Carr
Stamp Columnist
Posted July 17, 2005
John Michael O'Loughlin of Irving, Texas, is waging a campaign to have Anne
Frank and Samantha Smith honored on U.S. stamps.
Such efforts have succeeded in other countries, O'Loughlin says, but not in
the United States. "I discovered in my research," he noted, "that Germany
(1979), Israel (1988) and the Soviet Union (1985) have issued official
postage stamps honoring Anne and Samantha."
Both girls died when they were teenagers.
Anne Frank, a German-Jewish girl born June 12, 1929, was forced to go into
hiding during the Holocaust.
When she was 13, Anne and her family and four other people spent 25 months
during World War II living secretly in a set of rooms above her father's
office in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
After they were betrayed to the Nazis, all were arrested and deported to
concentration camps. In March 1945, nine months after she was imprisoned,
Anne Frank died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. She was 15.
Anne's diary, salvaged by Miep Gies, a family friend, was published in 1947.
The Diary of a Young Girl (written by Anne Frank and edited by Otto M.
Frank, her father, and Mirjam Pressler) has since been translated into about
70 languages.
On June 12, 2003, three members of Congress -- U.S. Reps. Steven Israel, D-N.Y.,
and Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. -- introduced
legislation urging the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee to recommend to
the postmaster general a stamp commemorating Anne Frank.
Four months later, the organization, United Jewish Communities announced its
support for a U.S. stamp commemorating what would have been Anne Frank's
75th birthday on June 12, 2004.
In 1983, Samantha Smith, a 10-year-old from Manchester, Maine, wrote a
letter to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov asking for peace.
At first she heard nothing back.
Then parts of her letter appeared in Pravda, the Soviet newspaper. Soon she
received an invitation to visit the Soviet Union. At the Kremlin's expense,
Samantha flew to Moscow on July 7, 1983. She toured the country for two
weeks, followed by American and Soviet media.
After returning to the United States, Samantha wrote Journey to the Soviet
Union, a book she dedicated "to the children of the world. They know that
peace is always possible."
She traveled to Japan, met with the prime minister and addressed an
international children's convention.
During the 1984 presidential campaign, she hosted a Disney Channel TV
special to educate children about the candidates, politics and the
government. At the time, the United States and Soviet Union each pledged
never to start a nuclear war. Samantha, at age 11, asked: "Why do you both
go on making missiles and aiming them at each other?"
In 1985, at age 13, Samantha Smith died in a plane crash.
On Jan. 23, 1997, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, offered a resolution
urging the U.S. Postal Service to "issue a series of postage stamps
highlighting the extraordinary achievements of young Americans and that a
stamp honoring Samantha Smith of Manchester, Maine, should be the first in
this series."
In his campaign, O'Loughlin -- who maintains the Web site
www.anneandsamantha.com, e-mail lldjohn@aol.com -- urges Americans to send
letters or cards once a year to the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee,
expressing their wish to see Anne Frank and Samantha Smith commemorated on
postage.
The address is: Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, Stamp Development, U.S.
Postal Service, 1735 N. Lynn St., Room 5013, Arlington VA 22209-6432.