A cover travels during the IGY from a congressperson in Washington, D.C., to his constituent in the State of Washington via the South Pole

Recently I bought an interesting cover, and in the past week I have learned more about it.

Cover from my collection. See text for details.

Let's look at the various elements of this cover:

1. The sender is Russell V. Mack (1891-1960), U.S. Representative from the State of Washington. 

2. The addressee is John A. F. Spellman, c/o Grays Harbor College, Aberdeen, Washington.

3. Mack's signature in the upper right corner represents his congressional franking privilege to send this without additional postage. But somehow (unclear to me how), this letter was first directed towards Pole Station, Antarctica.

4. The stamp is the definitive 1954 Statue of Liberty, Scott #1035, from the Liberty Series. Nothing too special about that. I don't know if it is the wet or dry printing version in the Scott catalog. (I do like the deep violet color; a decade later, one of my first favorite songs was Deep Purple, by the brother-sister team of Nino Tempo and April Stevens, which won the 1964 Grammy Award for Best Rock And Roll Recording).

5. The postmark on the stamp is from Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica, dated Jan. 11, 1958, during the IGY. The cancellation slogan is "U.S. Navy Operation Deep Freeze," the Navy operation that provided infrastructure support for the IGY Antarctic Program.

6. The cachet is far from good quality, but shows an Antarctic penguin.

So this cover traveled from Washington, D.C., to the South Pole via the franking privilege, and then on to Aberdeen, WA, via the stamp. Cool (literally)!

A few extra related tidbits:

7. Russell Mack was born in Hillman, Michigan. The other night I watched a documentary on PBS' American Experience series about the brilliant and unsung codebreaker Elizebeth Friedman. I thought I recalled that she had gone to Hillman College, but it turned out it was Hillside College, also in Michigan. Highly recommended documentary!

8. Mack's bio indicated he died of a heart attack on the House floor.  (That's one reason I retired at age 66 instead of going into my 70s.) John Quincy Adams was the most notable member of Congress (after his presidency) to literally die on the job, reminiscent of the equally dramatic death of his father, President John Adams. At least six other members of the House died on the premises.

9. This Report for Congress, Members of the U.S. Congress Who Have Died of Other Than Natural Causes While in Office (2002), by Mildred Amer, lists 61 members of Congress who died while in office, but not from natural causes. The names I recall are Hale Boggs (father of NPR's Cokie Roberts), Sonny Bono (Sonny and Cher), John Heinz (think ketchup), Bobby Kennedy (could have been President instead of Nixon), Huey Long (southern demagogue), Leo Ryan (Jonestown massacre), and Paul Wellstone (college professor).  The array of causes is diverse: suicides, assassinations, duels, food poisonings, Civil War service, car/train/ship/plane/ hunting/skiing/falling-off-building accidents.

10. After initial googling, I thought the addressee of the letter was the one-term (1981-1985) Washington Governor John D. Spellman, but the initials and dates didn't match. Turns out there is a John Spellman Library at Grays Harbor College. According to the very helpful Grays Harbor College librarian Adrienne Roush, John A. F. Spellman (1913-1993) was longtime head librarian at the College. As far as I can tell, he was not related to either Governor Spellman or noted philatelist Cardinal Francis Spellman. But he did live in the congressional district that Russell Mack represented, so I am assuming they were acquainted.

11. While looking at Google maps to locate Grays Harbor College in Aberdeen, I noticed that across the Chehalis River from the College is the Kurt Cobain Under the Bridge Memorial. So Kurt Cobain (1967-1994) grew up in Aberdeen, near the Young Street Bridge. He and Spellman lived in Aberdeen at the same time. For those of you of my generation, Kurt Cobain and his band Nirvana were pioneers in the grunge music scene in Seattle. Their album Nevermind (1992) became one of the best-selling albums of all time. The lead single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is not one of my favorite songs, but became an angsty teen anthem. The YouTube video has over 1 billion views!

Cobain and his band Nirvana were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. Sadly, like nine of those congresspersons, Cobain committed suicide in 1994 at the peak of his fame. Success is no guarantee of happiness.