Here’s looking at you, Betty.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) recently released a new stamp honoring the late Betty White, an actress and animal activist known for her comedic roles on television.
Johnston Senior Center members got a look at the new stamp last week when the post office chose the center as one of several community locations across the country to host an unveiling of the new stamp.
The Betty White stamp was officially launched on March 27 in Los Angeles, Jeanne Jackson, Providence Postmaster, told the audience.
“Betty White was an American treasure,” said Amber McReynolds, chairwoman of the USPS Board of Governors in a press release in March. “With this stamp, we honor…the enduring mark she left on our American culture.”
“It’s one of our ‘Forever’ stamps,” Jackson explained during the Johnston event, which means it will always cover the cost of posting a letter, even when the current mailing rate goes up.
A Johnston resident, Jackson said she chose the senior center for the announcement because it is a popular community space. The new stamp shows a digital illustration of a smiling Betty White, and if you look closely, you can see she is wearing paw-print-shaped earrings to honor her lifelong devotion to the humane care of animals.
According to the USPS, the stamp is based on a photograph taken by Kwaku Alston in 2010. Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamp with original art by Dale Stephanos.
Stephanos described how the tiniest detail in his design came to him at breakfast during the March event in LA.
“I was absent mindedly drawing instead of eating my eggs and looking back down at the mess I had been making in my sketchbook, I saw that at some point, I had drawn a paw print,” he said. “I had a bit of a eureka moment and thought, what if I just give Betty an earring that’s in the shape of a paw print?”
White’s accomplishments are outlined in a special video the USPS produced in her honor. Sometimes called the “first lady of television,” her career was primarily on the small screen where she created two memorable characters: Sue Ann Nevins on the Mary Tyler Moore show and Rose Nyland on the Golden Girls. In 2010, amid much fanfare, White became the oldest-ever guest host of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live”.
Jackson said that attending community events and meeting people is one of her favorite parts of being a postmaster.
She said that it can take about two years to create a new postage stamp, from the selection process through t design and production. She said that the new Betty White stamps are in limited supply right now but should be available at most local post offices and participating CVS and Walgreens drugstores across the state.
White died peacefully in her sleep on Dec. 31, 2021, just 17 days shy of her 100th birthday, stated the USPS press release.
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