Hank Aaron now forever - when it comes to postage stamp honor
In life, few people got as many letters as Henry “Hank” Aaron.
In 1973 alone, the year before he broke Babe Ruth’s home run record, Aaron received so many — more than 900,000 in fact — that the U.S. Postal Service gave him a plaque for being the American who received the most mail that year. But many of them were vitriolic letters of hate, mailed with an 8-cent stamp.
On Wednesday, Aaron got his own stamp.
At an emotional First Day of Issue Dedication Ceremony at the home plate of Truist Park, home of the Atlanta Braves, the United States Postal Service honored Aaron with a commemorative Forever stamp.
Aaron’s widow, Billye Aaron, said she was “overwhelmed” by the honor.
“At this moment in time, I can only say how very, very proud I am and how very, very proud my husband would be,” Billye Aaron said, after receiving a portrait of the stamp from Thomas J. Marshall, the U.S. Postal Service’s general counsel and executive vice president.
The USPS has been honoring Americans on stamps for more than 100 years. Aaron joins other sports luminaries such as Jim Thorpe, Arthur Ashe, Wilma Rudolph, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Yogi Berra, and the man whose ghost he chased, Babe Ruth.
The Aaron stamp art features a digital portrait of Aaron as a member of the Braves, based on a 1968 photo.
He is shown from the waist up in his classic right-handed batting stance.
Greg Breeding, an art director for USPS, designed the Aaron stamp and pane with original art by artist Chuck Styles and typography by Kevin Cantrell.
Billye Aaron and Marshall were joined on the field Wednesday by Atlanta Braves Chairman Terry McGuirk, Aaron biographer Howard Bryant, and attorney Allan Tanenbaum. They all praised Aaron, whose likeness and images are omnipresent throughout the stadium.
“Henry Aaron will forever be etched in the fabric of this organization,” McGuirk said. “He was the best player to ever put on a pair of spikes.”
On April 8, 1974, in Atlanta, Hank Aaron smashed his 715th home run, breaking Ruth’s 39-year-old record. Today, 48 years after he retired, Aaron is still the Major League leader in career runs batted in with a count of 2,297.
It is a record that may never be broken, as former Brave Freddie Freeman is the active leader in career RBIs, tied for 149th with 1,210. Aaron’s career record of 755 home runs was eventually eclipsed by Barry Bonds.
The Aaron stamp is the latest tribute to the baseball legend who died at the age of 86 in 2021.
This year, on the 50th anniversary of Aaron’s record-breaking home run, Billye Aaron cut the ribbon to open the Atlanta History Center’s 2,500-square-foot Hank Aaron exhibit, which pays homage to Aaron’s life and career.
In May, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, which inducted Aaron in 1982, unveiled a new statue of him at the museum’s entrance, left of the grand staircase.
Calling Aaron a transcending figure, Bryant said all the recognition Aaron is receiving is both fitting and deserving.
“We use the word ‘great’ with a lot of people. We use the word ‘iconic’ with a lot of people. But not a lot of people are great, iconic, memorable and legendary,” said Bryant, author of “The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron.”
“But all of those superlatives apply to him. And that is the difference. You can quantify it on the field or off the field. Take whatever measure you want and Henry Aaron endures,” Bryant added.
Standing in line to buy a sheet of 20 stamps, Napolean Harris knows that endurance very well. On the morning after the Braves won the 2021 World Series, he roamed Atlanta collecting commemorative copies of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, hoping to resell them one day.
When he finished and got home, he sat down and counted his haul. He had collected 44 papers.
“I got goosebumps,” Harris said, about matching Aaron’s uniform number. “It was something divine that happened to me. It was very spiritual.”
Harris said he couldn’t bring himself to sell any of the papers.
Sitting in the stands and soaking in the ceremony, in front of longtime Aaron friend and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, was Carla Koplin Cohn.
In the early 1970s, Cohn worked for the Braves as Aaron’s personal secretary. It was her job to sift through all of his letters.
“So many people concentrate on the hate mail that he received, but he also received hundreds of thousands of letters congratulating and fully supporting him as he chased Babe Ruth,” Cohn said.
“He would be overwhelmed with all of this. He never considered himself a star, he was just Henry Aaron. I don’t think that he would have had any idea that the years after playing baseball would probably be more meaningful.”
About the Author
Ernie Suggs is an enterprise reporter covering race and culture for the AJC since 1997. A 1990 graduate of N.C. Central University and a 2009 Harvard University Nieman Fellow, he is also the former vice president of the National Association of Black Journalists. His obsession with Prince, Spike Lee movies, Hamilton and the New York Yankees is odd.
