Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
The letter is in response to a request to FDR to send the collector some stamps from FDR's collection. The response letter stated that FDR was too busy to "go over his stamp collection", and the request was respectfully declined.
The author used this letter to show that the collector should have known better than to write to FDR to request stamps as FDR would have been too busy due to World War II to have anything to do with the hobby. The author stated regarding the collector making the request for stamps, "I am confident that such loss of perspective does not occur too often, but {this} letter exceeds anything I have encountered before." The author proceeds to make fun of the collector.
Well, we all know that we have hobbies to help us relax and distract us from the burdens of our every day lives. Hobbies help keep us healthy. I note this, because in less than 2 1/2 years from the date of the letter, FDR died of a stroke. Could the stroke have been averted had FDR worked on his stamp collection? Who knows, but history would have been a little different if he had.
Don't give up on hobbies, when life gets tough. That's when we need hobbies the most!
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Actually, FDR remained actively engaged in stamps and his stamp collection throughout the War up to and including the day he died. He had a wooden case 'loaded with stamps and albums' that accompanied him during his travels during the War.
His stoke was more likely due to uncontrolled hypertension and smoking and drinking...
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Yea, I'd suspect FDR would unwind a bit with his stamps... But maybe with a cigar and a brandy?
I wouldn't berate the letter writer, maybe he was a teen aged? Back when I was one in the late 1970s I sent FDCs to celebrities for autgraphs. You'd be amazed at how many complied!
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Assuming FDR's secretary was telling the truth and FDR didn't have time for stamps after Pearl Harbor, imagine how different one famous quote would have been had FDR heeded Michael's advice to keep up with the hobby for relaxation:
"The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself, and hinges that leave remnants!"
Lars
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...and you say that I'm bad...
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09:45:45pm
Roosevelt as a stamper from childhood or nearly so. I doubt that he would have forgone, at the least, bowseing through an album of an evening just as many of us do when the stresses and chaos of life become burdensome.
And with daily reports arriving from some of the darkest corners of the globe how could he not open to the pages of the British Solomon Islands, or the Dutch East Indies as events reminded him of some mounted stamp or a page missing but one or two issues.
We all need that break, that stolen minute to close our eyes and imagine things that our forces had to be contending with..
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11:34:37am
In the May 4, 2015 issue of Linn's, there is an article by James T. Currie where he is discussing his purchase of an October 1942 letter from President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) to a stamp collector. The letter was written and signed by FDR's private secretary.
The letter is in response to a request to FDR to send the collector some stamps from FDR's collection. The response letter stated that FDR was too busy to "go over his stamp collection", and the request was respectfully declined.
The author used this letter to show that the collector should have known better than to write to FDR to request stamps as FDR would have been too busy due to World War II to have anything to do with the hobby. The author stated regarding the collector making the request for stamps, "I am confident that such loss of perspective does not occur too often, but {this} letter exceeds anything I have encountered before." The author proceeds to make fun of the collector.
Well, we all know that we have hobbies to help us relax and distract us from the burdens of our every day lives. Hobbies help keep us healthy. I note this, because in less than 2 1/2 years from the date of the letter, FDR died of a stroke. Could the stroke have been averted had FDR worked on his stamp collection? Who knows, but history would have been a little different if he had.
Don't give up on hobbies, when life gets tough. That's when we need hobbies the most!
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re: Linn's Article - Letter From Franklin Roosevelt
Actually, FDR remained actively engaged in stamps and his stamp collection throughout the War up to and including the day he died. He had a wooden case 'loaded with stamps and albums' that accompanied him during his travels during the War.
His stoke was more likely due to uncontrolled hypertension and smoking and drinking...
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re: Linn's Article - Letter From Franklin Roosevelt
Yea, I'd suspect FDR would unwind a bit with his stamps... But maybe with a cigar and a brandy?
I wouldn't berate the letter writer, maybe he was a teen aged? Back when I was one in the late 1970s I sent FDCs to celebrities for autgraphs. You'd be amazed at how many complied!
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re: Linn's Article - Letter From Franklin Roosevelt
Assuming FDR's secretary was telling the truth and FDR didn't have time for stamps after Pearl Harbor, imagine how different one famous quote would have been had FDR heeded Michael's advice to keep up with the hobby for relaxation:
"The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself, and hinges that leave remnants!"
Lars
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11:25:25pm
re: Linn's Article - Letter From Franklin Roosevelt
...and you say that I'm bad...
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
11 May 2015
09:45:45pm
re: Linn's Article - Letter From Franklin Roosevelt
Roosevelt as a stamper from childhood or nearly so. I doubt that he would have forgone, at the least, bowseing through an album of an evening just as many of us do when the stresses and chaos of life become burdensome.
And with daily reports arriving from some of the darkest corners of the globe how could he not open to the pages of the British Solomon Islands, or the Dutch East Indies as events reminded him of some mounted stamp or a page missing but one or two issues.
We all need that break, that stolen minute to close our eyes and imagine things that our forces had to be contending with..
Login to Like
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