Janet Klug calls it a “wicked story,” but it’s actually quite sweet. Six-year-old Janet was a little jealous when her two older brothers were given stamp collections one Christmas morning. So she waited until her brothers lost interest and then “confiscated” their collections, hiding them under her bed. Once the coast was clear, a lifelong passion was born.
She specifically remembers a Canadian issue, a “pretty lady stamp” of young Queen Elizabeth. On a map, Canada was not far from Klug’s native Ohio, but to the elementary-school student, it was a million miles away. “All of this seemed extremely exotic to me.”
“Children are naturally inquisitive and natural collectors,” she tells people often in her unofficial role as an ambassador for stamp collecting. “All it really takes is to put a spark in front of them and let them go.”
Over the years, Klug built one of the world’s most extensive collections of stamps from the Polynesian kingdom of Tonga. More recently, she has turned to military postal history — specifically Australian forces that occupied Japan after World War II, and collections related to the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960.
“Stamp collectors are really historians,” Klug says. “That’s why most of us collect. Stamps are history that you can hold in your hands.”
Her profile as a collector has grown over the years. Klug writes regular columns for the stamp-collecting press and has authored two recent books on the subject. From 2003 to 2007, she served as president of the American Philatelic Society. She was, therefore, a natural pick when a spot opened on the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee in 2010. “Everyone has been so kind, so welcoming," she says of the experience. "It’s just been fantastic.”
Klug serves on the subject subcommittee, which is tasked with distilling thousands of ideas into the small number of stamps released annually.
It seems there will soon be a wider universe of possible subjects. The recent decision to allow stamps to feature living people is a step Klug applauds and publicly advocated before joining CSAC. Previously only people who had been dead for five years could be considered as stamp subjects. The only exception was for U.S. Presidents, who are honored with a stamp within a year after their death.
“The United States is late out of the gate doing this,” Klug says. “I think it’s a great idea. Why not honor people during their lives?” After all, the Postal Service has, after a fashion, recognized a living person on a stamp. The First Moon Landing, 1969 stamp (issued in 1994) doesn’t name Neil Armstrong, but, she says, “who else could it be?” Further, the very first postal stamp honored a living person — Queen Victoria, issued in England in 1840.
As a prominent member of the collecting community, she’s fielded no shortage of ideas for new stamps. Within minutes of the announcement of her appointment to CSAC, her e-mail inbox began filling with suggestions.
With a proper eye for irony, one might question if Klug would have preferred her friends to mail her those ideas. But in fact, Klug fully embraces the Internet revolution that has so profoundly affected the postal world. Thanks to online auction sites, she can do business with stamp collectors on the other side of the world. And it doesn’t just influence where she pursues her hobby, but also when. “If I feel like it," she says, "I can sit there in my pajamas in the middle of the night, buying stamps from Serbia.”
Dressed in her pajamas, admiring stamps — not unlike a little girl one Christmas morning, many years ago.
Learn more about the other members of CSAC by visiting our Meet the Team section.