posted 05-31-2009 11:40 PM               

Space Cover #7, Apollo 17, Last Men on the Moon

With the 40th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing approaching this July, I thought it appropriate to take a look at a cover with an image that sums up the Moon Landings. This event cover celebrates the 35th Anniversary of the Last Men on the Moon.

When Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the surface of the Moon, In Peace for all Mankind, like many of us I was glued to the television screen. My father, Paul Calle had designed the US postage stamp depicting that First Step On The Moon and I knew that the astronauts were carrying the engravings of the stamp to the Moon with them. My father fondly remembers that I kept asking, "Where's the stamp!? Where's the stamp!?"

What I could never have known then, was that 20 years later the US Postal Service would ask me to design the 1989 20th Anniversary Moon Landing Priority Mail stamp and five years later in 1994 my father and I would jointly design two stamps commemorating the 25th Anniversary.

The cover depicted here celebrates Man's Last Steps on the Moon with a flag stamp and the 1994 29c First Moon Landing commemorative stamp we designed. The cachet shows Eugene Cernan standing with the US flag on the surface of the Moon for the last time:

As I take man's last steps from the surface, back home for some time to come - but we believe not too long onto the future... I believe history will record that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow... And as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.

posted 06-05-2009 07:48 PM               

Also, is this cover for sale?

Woody