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I was invited to the Village Park Elementary School in Falls Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to give a presentation about stamp collecting. I spoke to a class of twenty five children in the third grade. Fortunately for me I had my wife Mildred and my daughter Deborah with me to lend a hand. The children were so excited and had so many questions that the three of us were kept jumping for hours.

Our intention was to keep the children busy the whole time we were there. We started out by giving each child an envelope with a city/state cancellation on it. Inside the envelopes were an assortment of off-paper worldwide stamps. I spent my time explaining the many things that could be learned from stamps. I included information about some of the many aspects of stamps, such as watermarks, perforations, colors/shades, tagging, etc. which we demonstrated later. Mildred passed out copies of Linn's stamp newspapers plus some older catalogues. We tried to keep the whole presentation as informal as possible. The front table was filled with the tools of our hobby along with an assortment of philatelic items for the kids to look at. We displayed several moon landing envelopes, 3-D stamps, railroad cancellations, and other interesting items. While I talked, kids were encouraged to walk around the table and ask Mildred or Deborah questions, and believe me, they had plenty.

We asked the kids to locate the city and state found on their individual envelopes. If they could, we rewarded them with another packet of stamps. Everyone took part, helping those that needed assistance so that they, too, could get a prize. I wish you could have seen their faces when we handed them their gifts. Then we had them remove the foreign stamps from the envelope and rewarded them again if they could find a country their stamp came from. We had so much fun that afternoon. I'll never forget it.

At the end of our demonstration we decided to have a contest, with the prize being a stamp from Turkish Cyprus, inscribed "Kibris." The stamp depicted President Reagan and President Gorbachev signing an arms agreement, which was in fact the beginning of the end of the Cold War. We explained the history of the stamp and what it would mean to each and every one of us.

For a contest, each child was asked to design and draw their own stamp over the weekend. The teacher collected their pictures and the winner was picked by their fourth grade peers. Incidentally, the design that won was for a British stamp. We sent it to Queen Elizabeth and she sent a beautiful letter to the winning child.

The principal and the teacher say they haven't seen such enthusiasm since. It was a day of fun that I'll never forget and am looking forward to doing it again as soon as possible.

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