Washington Post readers may find a familiar face in their mailbox next year: The newspaper’s former publisher, the late Katharine Graham, is being honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a new stamp.

On Monday, the USPS announced several stamps it will debut in 2022 including a commemorative stamp for the 50th anniversary of the passage of Title IX as well as stamps featuring the sculptor Edmonia Lewis, folk musician Pete Seeger, marine biologist Eugenie Clark and Native American Modernist painter George Morrison.

Graham, who took over as chairman and chief executive of The Washington Post Co. after her husband’s death in 1963, is honored as a part of the “Distinguished Americans” series. Graham VIn 1998, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her memoir “Personal History.”

The two-ounce stamp will be the 17th in the “Distinguished Americans” series, which the USPS began distributing in 2000. Stamps from the series have also featured Olympic runner Wilma Rudolph, author Harriet Beecher Stowe and Tuskegee airman C. Alfred “Chief” Anderson. The Postal Service adds a new stamp every few years, and before Graham, the most recent addition was a 2017 stamp featuring Robert Panera, a leader in the field of deaf studies and former professor at Washington, D.C.’s Gallaudet University.

Katharine Weymouth, Graham’s granddaughter and Post publisher from 2008 to 2014, was excited to hear about the stamp – “a wonderful recognition for a woman who led the way for other women in business and was a champion for the power of information,” Weymouth said in an email.

The first woman to lead a Fortune 500 company, Graham came to the job with limited journalism experience and no business background. She oversaw The Post’s rise to national prominence; during her tenure, The Post Co. went public on the New York Stock Exchange and saw revenue increase nearly twentyfold. The story of Graham’s decision to take the company public and publish the Pentagon Papers was dramatized in the 2017 film “The Post.”

Upon Graham’s death in 2001, Ben Bradlee, who was executive editor during her time as publisher, said, “She set the newspaper on a course that took it to the very top ranks of American journalism in principle and excellence and fairness.”

The stamp will feature an oil painting of Graham by Lynn Staley, based on a photo of Graham from the 1970s, when she was at the height of her power in Washington. It was designed by art director Derry Noyes.

Other stamps to debut this year include mountain flora and Pony Car stamps, and individual stamps featuring blueberries and celebrating women’s rowing.


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