Mary-Anne Penner, the head of Stamp Services for the U.S. Postal Service, has retired. Penner had said she would be retiring, with the exact date depending on her husband’s health and completion of their retirement home. The rumor that she had retired or had given notice had been kicking around for a week before Linn’s Stamp News confirmed it.

Penner has held the post since 2015. Her retirement was effective January 31.

One of her predecessors, Dave Failor, once told The Virtual Stamp Club that many at USPS headquarters consider being head of Stamp Services to be “the best job in the Postal Service.”

Although she headed the program when the USPS issued heat-sensitive stamps (Total Solar Eclipse, 2017), scratch-and-sniff stamps (Frozen Treats, also 2017) and a lenticular souvenir sheet (Art of Magic, 2018), another major accomplishment as director of Stamp Services may have been instituting greater control of stamp production quantities. Fewer stamps were printed, resulting in fewer stamps destroyed when an issue had run its course.

She has been replaced on an acting basis by William Gicker, who has been the creative director and manager of stamp development; that is, the unit that suggests ideas, obtains rights, and designs the stamps. Gicker has been the art director for several issues, including this year’s Alabama Statehood and Frogs stamps.

Linn’s also first reported that Terri L Basinger has been appointed manager of Stamp Fulfillment Services, the operation in Kansas City that distributes and sells stamp and products and also cancels first day covers. FDC collectors may recall that she was once the supervisor of Cancellation Services, and spoke at Americover 2010, the annual show and convention of the American First Day Cover Society. “She is a longtime friend of first day cover collectors and servicers,” said the organization’s liaison with the USPS, Foster Miller in The Stamp Collecting Forum.