The most popular and famous child star ever, Shirley Temple, died recently of natural causes at the age of 85.

Her upbeat, cheerful movies raised spirits during the Depression, and for four years — 1935-1938 — she was the top star in Hollywood, more popular than Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, or anyone else.

Later, after her acting career had petered out, she became active in Republican politics and served twice as a U.S. Ambassador and in other roles for the State Department.

I wouldn’t call myself a Shirley Temple fan, as in fanatic; her stardom was before my time, her film career over by the time I was born. But if there was ever a candidate for a Legends of Hollywood stamp, she is it. Heck, they even named the faux cocktail served to kids after her, the Shirley Temple.

And then I thought, “but will the marketeers who now run the U.S. stamp program see her as commercial enough?” I mean, according to the Washington Post last November, USPS marketing director Nagisa Manabe vetoed a stamp for the great jazz singer Sarah Vaughan because today’s kids don’t know who she was.

Memo to Manabe: I’ll bet most Americans couldn’t tell you who half the people in the Black Heritage series were, or any of the people in the recent sets of stamps honoring design, such as the upcoming Pioneers of Graphic Design. Bradbury Thompson? Isn’t that the furniture store chain? Norman Rockwell makes rocket engines, right? One of the purposes of a nation’s stamps, or at least this nation’s stamps, is to bring to our attention historic figures and subjects about which we ought to know something.

There’s a story that a well-known philatelic editor turned down a chance to edit the book Stamp Collecting for Dummies, because “stamp collecting isn’t for dummies.” He was wrong to turn down the book, but right about who collects stamps: We’re mostly thoughtful people with a sense of history. The kids who will become stamp collectors, and continue philately into adulthood, are mostly thoughtful kids with a sense of history.

Deliver only commercial subjects on our stamps, and you will drive off many of the adults — some are already heading for the exits — and you won’t snare those thoughtful kids with a thirst to learn. Collecting stamps will become another short-lived childhood fad, like Davy Crockett or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

If there’s any justice, we will see a Shirley Temple stamp in a few years, not because it will sell lots of copies, but because it’s right.