Ray Hahn
National Postcard Week
Postcard collectors, WORLDWIDE, take notice! This is your week.
There is a certain delight in knowing that our hobby is celebrated in such a way that a whole week of the year is dedicated to collecting, organizing, and learning about postcards. A personal note from your editor: I have never made a righteous attempt at collecting NPCW cards, but hundreds have accumulated over the years through participation and happenstance. The illustrations in this piece come from my “accumulation.” The national exposure for NPCW comes, in part, from WikipediA, the free [online] encyclopedia. The entry reads as follows: National Postcard Week is an annual event to promote the use of postcards, held in the first full week of May since 1984. Started in the US, it is also celebrated by collectors in other countries. Special commemorative postcards have been printed for Postcard Week by various organizations, especially postcard clubs, since as early as 1985. Throughout the years many clubs from across America have dabbled in celebrating NPCW with custom made cards. A few that I can think of include, Rhode Island, Webfooters, Garden State, San Francisco, and South Jersey. [Please, accept my apology if your club was omitted from this list; an omission speaks only to the fact that there is no card in my accumulation representing your club.] One postcard club that has been faithful to the production of National Post Card Week cards is the Wichita (Kansas) Postcard Club. Since the first year of the NPCW celebration, Wichita has produced a card every year. * * * As a celebration of this week and a salute to Wichita, I have searched and selected one card from each of the decades from the 1980s to the 2020s. These are really fun postcards. Enjoy!
NATIONAL POSTCARD WEEK MAY 6-12, 1984
Truly a period card. It shows a biplane pulling a banner advertising NPCW over what could be a postcard cloud above a field filled with Kansas sunflowers. A very worthy first!NATIONAL POSTCARD WEEK MAY 4-10, 1997
Representative of the pioneer spirit of Kansas, this 1997 card reminds the viewer of the hardscrabble lifestyle so many who went west adapted to, just for the privilege of saying, “It’s all mine.”
The man of the image is not the farmer-in-the-dell, he is a hard working pioneer making his own way, in his own world.
Bravo, America!
In addition to the Club Cards of the ‘90s, many of the individual members of the Wichita Club created cards in celebration of National Post Card Week. Two examples of those 1990s masterpieces come from Hal Ottaway and Art Craig.
NATIONAL POSTCARD WEEK
MAY 1-7, 1994
Cohen, Bette Mays, Lois Powell, Dolores Rowe, and Lew and Janet Baer. [Once again, please, accept my apology if your name was omitted from this list; an omission speaks only to the fact that there is no card in my accumulation from you.]
NATIONAL POST CARD WEEK MAY 4 – 10, 2003
My favorite from the two-thousand ought’s, strangely returns to the theme of 1984. Big fluffy clouds and sunflowers. Everyone who has traveled in Kansas recognizes the beauty of the open plains. Tall grasses wave in the winds; the faces of the sunflowers greet you in the morning and wave goodbye at dusk.
NATIONAL POST CARD WEEK MAY 3-9, 2015
The decade of the twenty-tens seemed introspective. Many realizations surfaced at that time and demanded a reexamination of our history. We all hoped that such a retro view would generate a plan for a healthy and wealthy future. A hard look at the places we were comfortable, such as the village movie-theater, made it a fun thing to celebrate a heritage. Remember when a Saturday matinee ticket cost 10¢?
NATIONAL POST CARD WEEK MAY 2 – 8, 2021
At the threshold of a new decade, isn’t it great that so many of our little ones who have no memory of the nineteen-hundreds are reaching adulthood? The marquee above the Planeview Theatre in our 2021 NPCW mentions Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly. The Census Bureau tells us that about four-million births occur each year. That means, one-third of our population will be asking, “Who are Rita and Gene?” Thank you, Wichita Postcard Club, for being such good stewards of National Post Card Week
Thanks VERY MUCH for this salute to the Wichita Postcard Club and showing this sample of Rick Geary artwork. We have been so fortunate to have Rick with us all of these years, making first a show postcard for us each year since 1979, and then in 1984 we started asking him to create a postcard to celebrate National Postcard Week. Then I believe, in 1990, at the suggestion and encouragement of BJ and Jonell Davies we asked Rick to also make us a MEMBER postcard as well. Most organizations have a member card that we carry in our billfold… Read more »
At the time in which the Planeview Theatre scene is set, the man generally would have been walking nearer the street to shield his wife (who would have been pushing the stroller) from possibly being splashed by dust or water from passing cars.
The last post card above (2021) is very nice is it still for sale?