Here are two more messages on this subject of whether you have to be dead to get on a postage stamp and if so, for how long. This first one comes from someone who signs his message, "MichaelRbn"…
I think the reason for the timing of the ten year rule is actually pretty simple. If you read the information provided in the Postal Service website to which you previously linked, it appears that it was part of the transition that occured circa 1970 when the old Post Office Department was converted into the new U.S. Postal Service. Part of the reasoning for that change was an attempt to remove some of the worst aspects of political patronage from what was considered an antiquated Cabinet Department and have the Post Office become an efficient modern corporate entity. Now, it is not my intent to defend that thesis here and now. It's fairly irrelevant to the question at hand. But a side benefit of the change was supposed to be to minimize the situation which existed where often times Congress would pass resolutions (or even laws) requiring the Post Office to print stamps for a favored industry, cause or person. And there are often instances where the ten year rule is used to fend off campaigns for stamps to be issued immediately after some momentarily popular individual's death. I doubt very much anyone deliberately created the rule to slight Martin Luther King, Jr. (who was honored along with RFK with a stamp right after the ten year period elapsed in 1979).
And this one comes from David Goehner…
Yep, there are kids pictured on the "Great Depression" stamp from the 1930s "Stamps of the Century" set who were indeed alive when the stamp was issued in 1998. The stamp uses the famous 1936 picture taken by Dorthea Lange of Florence Owens Thompson with three of her children. Through some brief online searching, I located a fellow named Roger Sprague, who is a grandson of the woman pictured and apparently offers himself for lectures about the Depression. He confirmed that two of the children were still alive when the stamp came out (but didn't specifically clarify whether or not they are still alive, although since he mentioned the date of death of just one of the children, it seems reasonable to assume that the other two are still alive today). Roger also offered some insight regarding how the stamp people got around the "people who are still alive" issue. Here are a couple of lines from his message to me this morning:
At the time the stamp was issued, both Katherine and Norma were living. If you look at the photo again, you will see a baby in my grandmother's arms near the lower right. This child is my aunt Norma, age 1 year. Katherine is the child on my grandmother's right shoulder, and my mother Ruby is on her left shoulder. My grandmother, Florence, died in Sept. 1983 at age 80, my mother, Ruby, died in Feb. 1990 at age 60. Congress was lobbied to allow for the photo to be turned into a stamp even though two of the persons were still living. Actually, the only living person whose "face" appears in the photo is my aunt Norma's, and no one, I'm sure, would recognize her from it.
So it looks like the score is now one clown and two kids who have appeared on a U.S. postage stamp while they were still alive.
Not much to add to this except that I continue to be amazed at how much info comes in when I post a question here. Thanks to all who wrote. And now I have to go mail some bills using stamps with a picture of an eagle on them. Wonder if that eagle is still alive…