The Boy Scout Centennial Stamp

The first new postage stamp for the 2010 year was recently revealed.   To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America, the USPS will issue the Celebrate Scouting stamp at the centennial Boy Scouts Jamboree, to be held next July at Fort AP Hill, Virginia.   The stamp was designed by Mill Valley, CA artist Craig Frazier, depicting a modern scout standing on a rocky summit, silhouetted against the shadow of a classic Scout peering through binoculars.

The Boy Scouts of America were founded by publisher William Boyce in 1910, based on the British version established by Boer war veteran General Robert Baden-Powell a few years earlier.   BSA quickly became the go-to outdoors club for boys and young men, teaching them — as defined by the Scout Law — to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.  The Scouts weren’t content to just teach camping skills, but to also generate fine, upstanding young gentlemen, and in that pursuit they even devoted one entire merit badge to the pursuit of stamp collecting.

This is far from the first time the U.S. Postal Service has  dedicated a stamp to the Boy Scouts of America – I’m certain they’ve even appeared on more stamps than most presidents have.  The first was issued in 1950, in honor of the 2nd National Boy Scout Jamboree (which corresponded with the 40th anniversary of the Scouts), and depicts three saluting Scouts in front of the Statue of Liberty.   The second was issued in 1960, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the BSA, and depicting a single saluting scout, as painted by Norman Rockwell.   In 1985, the Scouts were depicted hiking through the wilderness in a block of four stamps commemorating the UN’s “International Youth Year.”  Most recently, in 1998 a stamp was issued honoring both the Boy and Girl Scouts as part of the thirty-stamp “Celebrate the Century” series.   This doesn’t include the numerous Scouting stamps issued by countries around the world: most countries that have a Scouts of their own have released postage stamps depicting them.   As a topical stamp collection, Scouting would easily fill pages and pages of a folder, covering just the past century, and starting with next year’s Celebrate Scouting stamp, it will continue into Scouting’s next century.