AFDCS Recognizes Volunteers With 2021 Awards

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For Immediate Release
AFDCS Recognizes Volunteers With 2021 Awards

The American First Day Cover Society is recognizing more than half a dozen of its members for their service to the organization. At its annual convention, held in conjunction with Great American Stamp Show in August in Rosemont, Ill., Glenn C. Michel Special Recognition Awards were presented to:

  • Tom Peluso (posthumously), who often donated his artistic talents: He produced many convention event covers and donated many of his Therome Cachets FDCs to the Society’s auctions through the cachet contest;
  • Otto Thamasett, for coordinating the Graebner Chapter portion of the AFDCS Americover Hospitality Suite for over 15 years, including donations to the Hospitality Suite Silent Auction;
  • Chris Lazaroff, Tris Fall, and Jim Hogg for serving on the search committee that

    Gary Dickinson

    selected the new AFDCS editor and executive secretary, after those posts became vacant because of the coronavirus pandemic;

  • Gary Dickinson, for writing a column on Canadian FDCs in First Days for more than 10 years, and compiling a catalogue of Elvis Presley FDCs;
  • John White and members of the Claude C. Ries Chapter Auction Committee (co-chaired by Michael Litvak and Dave Bennett), for their work on the highly-successful semi-annual AFDCS auctions.

Michel Awards can be won by the same person more than once and winners are chosen by a committee chaired by James Tatum, Jr. The award is named after “Mike” Michel, the AFDCS general counsel who guided the society through a reorganization in the mid-1980s.

The American First Day Cover Society is a not-for-profit educational organization. In addition to First Days, the AFDCS also publishes handbooks and catalogues, and promotes the collecting of both modern and “classic” issues and cachets, as well as exhibiting FDCs. It offers awards for outstanding first day cover exhibits and an annual contest for cachetmakers, and is a co-host of the annual Great American Stamp Show.

For more information about the AFDCS, visit www.afdcs.org, e-mail afdcs@afdcs.org or write the AFDCS at Post Office Box 246, Colonial Beach, VA 22443-0246.