American Airmail Society Presentation

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David Ball Introducer
Ken Sanford Interrupted Mail
Bill Fort Pacific Airmail Routes
Matt Heller Pioneer Philippines Airmail
Dan Gribbin Air France to South America

Ken Sanford is retired from the Airline Industry after forty years, and has been an aerophilatelist for most of that time. He worked for Pan Am as Manager, Passenger Services in Pan Am Headquarters in New York from 1969 to 1974 and in a similar position for the International Air Transport Association in Geneva, Switzerland for 23 years. He has specialized in the philately of Pan American World Airways for over forty years. His collections have won gold medals in national level exhibitions with international participation, in the USA, Canada, Great Britain and Switzerland.
 
He is a Past President of the American Air Mail Society and has served as a member of that Society’s Board of Directors for many years. Ken is President of the Metropolitan Airpost Society, which is an aerophilatelic society in the New York Metropolitan area. He has given displays of his Pan American Airways & Imperial Airways crash mail collection to aerophilatelic societies in many countries around the world.
 
Ken will show crash covers from ten different Pan Am crashes, each of which has an interesting story or the covers have unusual or interesting cachets or labels. Some of them are where only one or a few covers have been recorded.
 
Bill Fort is a lifetime stamp collector. He collects stamps of the Americas issued before 1950. He specializes in U.S. and Mexican revenue stamps. Bill exhibits airmail postal history including Pan America Airlines airmail and World War II transoceanic airmail. He also exhibits usages of the U.S. 4th Bureau Issues of 1922.
 
Bill is an APS Philatelic Judge. He currently serves as Secretary of the American Airmail Society. He is active in organizing the yearly NAPEX and SPRINGPEX stamp shows..
 
Matt Heller has been collecting stamps and postal history since childhood, picking up the hobby, and the “generalist” approach, from his father—”If it’s been written up in Linn’s, I want an example or five!”. He actively acquires U.S. postal history of all types, world postal history, first flights from around the world, and zeppelin and other aerophilatelic \ topics. His specialized collections include U.S. Military Flights in the Philippines from 1925 to 1935, covers postmarked on his birthday, and advertising covers for drums/percussion instruments manufacturers and sellers. He is a member and past Board Member and Publications Chairman of the American Air Mail Society, as well as a member of the U.S. Possessions Philatelic Society and the International Philippines Philatelic Society. Matt presented at the Southeastern Stamp Expo in 2014, and has been published in the Airpost Journal, receiving the AAMS Frank H. Blumenthal Memorial Literature Award in 2018, and the Philippine Philatelic Journal.
 
During his part of the program, hewill discuss “U.S. Military Flights in the Philippines, 1925–1935”.
 
Dan Gribbin serves as Vice President of the American Air Mail Society. He is a member of the APS, the Çercle Philatélique Français, and the Bermuda Collector’s Society. He frequently presents talks on French South Atlantic airmail, with articles having appeared in Air Mail News, Airpost Journal, Stamp World, and Scott Stamp Monthly. Most recently, he published “The Iron Man and the Ugly Duckling” in The American Philatelist for November 2021, and “Aeropostale and Air France: A Decade of South Atlantic Airmail” in the Smithsonian Scholarly Press volume of selected articles from the seventh, eight, and ninth postal history symposia.
 
In “French South-Atlantic Airmail: When Seahorses Fly,” I present eight covers that were flown from Great Britain to South America via Air France (with the exception of one flown by Deutsche Luft Hansa). Each of these covers is franked with at least one Great Britain’s George V “Seahorse” stamps. I offer background on the design and usage of these stamps, as well as background on the Air France pilots and (and the aircraft) involved in the flights that took these letters across the South Atlantic to their destinations in South America.
 
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