In 1938, while marred in the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Postmaster General James A. Farley hatched a plan to help promote the fledgling air transport industry and the U.S. Postal Service. They did so by celebrating the 20th anniversary of the first U.S. airmail route, making May 15-21  National Air Mail Week.

To celebrate the day, each town was invited to create its own cachet, a commemorative design to mark the event printed or stamped on the envelopes mailed that day. (Accompanying photos provide national and local samples of these.)

Citizens, used to communal action to combat the nation’s economic straits, were encouraged to mail or receive an airmail letter during the weeklong celebration. Local and state authorities, postal employees and organizations, the media, and millions of citizens, cooperated to make it a successful event.

Across the country, thousands of cities, big and small, became involved with their own local air mail activities. More than 10,000 individual city cachets were designed giving each locality an opportunity to showcase what they felt made their community special or important. The repercussions of the event went beyond the intended commemoration, newspaper articles from Chicago to Tampa recorded, as the cachet designing activity engendered bonding moments across neighborhoods all over the country. In addition, much to the relief of air transport industry leaders, many local airports first opened for business that week.

National Air Mail Week began with the issuance of a six-cent airmail stamp commemorating the inauguration of air mail service which had its formal beginnings on May 15, 1918 with flights between New York, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. The week’s main feature was Thursday, May 19, the day when more than 1,700 special one-day-only flights took place carrying those original and specially prepared airmail covers linking location to far-flung location across the nation.

It is estimated that more than 16 million letters with their special designs and 9,000 parcels were transported via air mail that week. With a national population of about 129 million, that meant that one out of every eight citizens participated in either sending or receiving mail.

Our Beacon Field Airport, by then long a home to many an airmail airplane, was an integral part of the commemoration. The local group, Friends of Beacon Field Airport, have put up a small exhibit at the Beacon Mall Starbucks (see included photos) to showcase our area’s participation in that famous week.

For more information on National Air Mail Week see www.postalmuseum.si.edu. For information on the history of our local airports, see www.beaconfieldairport.com.

All mail stamp photos are courtesy of the Friends of Beacon Field Airport.