June 5, 2002 – Two new kinds of stamps will go on sale at local post offices and across the nation on Friday.
One is a "transitional" 3-cent stamp that is to be used with a regular 34-cent stamp when the price of mailing a first-class letter goes up to 37 cents on June 30. The other is a tribute to heroes of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that also is a vehicle for raising funds for families of emergency relief personnel who were killed or disabled in responding to the attacks.
Postmaster Louis A. Jackson said in a release Wednesday that the transitional stamps bear a red, white and blue star graphic image. They initially will be available in self-adhesive format in sheets of 50, he said, but gummed stamps in coils will arrive on island later.
However, the release noted, there are older 3-cent stamps available in coil form.
"The U.S. Postal Service wants to make it easy for customers to use their old supply of postage stamps after the new rates take effect," Jackson said.
The "Heroes of 2001" semi-postal stamp, designed by Derry Noyes of Washington, D.C., bears the widely published image of firefighters raising the American flag over the fallen World Trade Center buildings in New York. It's a detail of the photograph taken at ground zero by Thomas E. Franklin of The Record, a newspaper in Bergen County, New Jersey.
The first-class stamp will sell for 45 cents, with all proceeds above the first-class rate (that is, 11 cents until June 30 and 8 cents after that) going to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in accordance with the 9-11 Heroes Stamp Act of 2001.
"The stamp honors the American heroes who responded to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11," Jackson said. "It offers the public a way to provide assistance to the families of emergency relief personnel who died or were permanently disabled in the line of duty."
This is the Postal Service's second "semi-postal" issue that enables customers to support a cause by buying the stamps. The first was issued in 1998 to benefit breast cancer research; to date its sales have raised more than $25.6 million for that cause.
Initially, 205 million self-adhesive Heroes stamps have been printed, the release stated, but more will be produced if there is a demand.

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