Malaria
Philatelists
International

The day was June 5th, the location was NAPEX 2009. MPI member John Hotchner had brought some of his malaria collection for me to look at. As I looked through a few of his albums, I noticed about 10 covers with the W.H.O. Regional Office - Americas (Washington D.C, USA) meter slogan. The covers were all addressed to the same person (William C. Hines of New Orleans) and they were all pretty clean and unopened. I assumed that William new someone at the W.H.O. office and these were all philatelic. I did notice that there was a cover dated August 27th, 1962 and on the front was an auxiliary marking "Received unsealed at New Orleans, La." and I asked if I could borrow it for an article I was thinking of writing.

Well, I kind of meant borrow for about 50 years and John said that if the cover was that exciting for me, I could have it. It wasn't till I got home when I looked at the back of the cover and saw the Official Seal on the back which turned this cover from a very nice cover into a great cover. But the story does not end there. John also let me 'borrow' another cover dated August 29th, 1962. I saw that there were two of them in his collection and I had asked to 'borrow' this one also. After I scanned the two items, I thought that I should carefully open one of the covers and see what was inside - I expected to see one to three folded blank pages of paper that would inserted to keep the cover from getting bent in transit - I still expected these to be philatelic. Instead, I saw real content from PAHO. Now, the 'Officially Sealed' cover and the 2nd cover went from great to amazing. I scanned the contents and then posted a page on my website for John to see. I mentioned that I would like to scan all of the other covers and that this could be a side project in itself and John has now let me 'borrow' the other 7 covers for 50+ years. For me, this group of covers constitutes an amazing find of actual commercially used covers with contents. (Note: I ended up sending John a large group of malaria items for a trade so I could sleep at night.)

Below are all of the PAHO covers originally from John's collection with the contents below each cover. (As usual, click on any image to see it 2X and then click on the 2X image to enlarge it again) Some of the dates on the newsletters inside the covers do not exactly match up with the meter dates. And some of the newsletters just have August with no day. At this point, I do not understand how someone signed up for these and/or are there more out there. I will guess that the 'Officially Sealed' cover is unique unless the whole mailing of that specific newsletter was not sealed. The search will now begin for another one with the same date.

PAHO August 23rd, 1962

PAHO August 23rd - Contents - Page 1

PAHO August 23rd - Contents - Page 2

PAHO August 24th, 1962

PAHO August 24th - Contents

PAHO August 27th, 1962 "Received unsealed at New Orleans, La." - Front

PAHO August 27th, 1962 "Received unsealed at New Orleans, La." - Back

PAHO August 27th, 1962 "Received unsealed at New Orleans, La." - Contents - Page 1

PAHO August 27th, 1962 "Received unsealed at New Orleans, La." - Contents - Page 2

PAHO August 27th, 1962

PAHO August 27th - Contents

PAHO August 28th, 1962

PAHO August 28th - Contents

PAHO August 28th, 1962

PAHO August 28th - Contents - Page 1

PAHO August 28th - Contents - Page 2

PAHO August 29th, 1962

PAHO August 29th - Contents

PAHO August 29th, 1962

PAHO August 29th - Contents - Page 1

PAHO August 29th - Contents - Page 2

PAHO August 29th - Contents - Page 3

PAHO August 30th, 1962

PAHO August 30th - Page 1

PAHO August 30th - Page 2