Next Arab American On A Stamp Could Be Steve Jobs
The Washington Post is reporting that the US Postal Service’s Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee has included Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Computer Inc. and developer of the iPod, iPad and iPhone, among a list of Americans whose profiles are likely to be printed on future issues of postage stamps next year.
Jobs, who is Arab of Syrian heritage, would become the fourth American of Arab heritage whose picture would adorn a postage stamp issuance. Past honorees include Chicago Bears owner George Halas (1997), American diplomat Philip Habib (2006) and television actor and founder of St. Judes Children’s Hospital Danny Thomas.
Ironically, American Arabs have been pushing for the issuance of a stamp to honor American Arab poet and author Khalil Gibran, but the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee has never given the Gibran stamp proposal formal recognition.
According to published reports, other Americans of notoriety are also slated to be profiled on a postage stamp in 2015 including pop icons Michael Jackson, James Brown and Jimi Hendrix, along with talk show hosts Johnny Carson, actor Charlton Heston, Basketball star Wilt Chamberlain and Gay Rights activists and slain San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk.
Jobs was put up for adoption when he was born on February 24, 1955 by his biological parents. His father was Abdulfattah “John” Jandali and his mother is Joanne Carole Schieble. Jandali, a Syrian American teacher, met Schieble, a Swiss American student, at the University of Wisconsin.
Jandali claimed he and Schiebel had no choice but to put the new born baby up for adoption because Schiebel’s parents objected to their relationship.
Many believed anti-Arab racism was the cause of the problem. Jandali was Muslim and Schieble was Christian.
Jobs, who was born in San Francisco, was adopted Paul Reinhold Jobs and Clara Jobs, who was Armenian American.
The story about Jobs being included on the 2015 postage stamp list was leaked by the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee this week apparently to coincide with the 59th anniversary of Jobs birth. The issuance of the stamp is expected to coincide with the 60th anniversary of his birth, next year.
The US Postal Service claims that it has a responsibility to portray the American experience to a world audience through postage stamps and postal stationary.
Many of those who appear on stamps are nominated by the American public, although the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee has rejected calls for the Gibran Stamp.
The Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee consists of 11 members, none of which are American Arab. One of the members is the vice president of the Hearst Corporation which in 2010 forced the resignation of veteran journalist and White House Correspondent Helen Thomas after an anti-Arab activist distorted and twisted comments she made in response to a question about Israel and Palestine.
Former President George W. Bush pushed for the issuance of the Muslim “Eid el Fitr” (High Holidays) Stamp to honor Muslims and to add to the postal recognition of the Jewish and Christian religious holidays of Hanukkah and Christmas.
The Committee members are:
Gail Anderson
Partner, Anderson Newton Design; instructor, School of Visual Arts; author.
Benjamin Bailar
Former Postmaster General, postal history stamp collector.
Caroline Bauman
Associate director, Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.
B. J. Bueno
Founder, The Cult Branding Company; partner, Nonbox Consulting.
Donna de Varona
TV sports commentator, Olympic swimming champion, select Director of the Board, U.S. Soccer Foundation.
Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research, Harvard University.
Janet Klug, Chair
Philatelist, author, retired.
Harry Rinker
Antiques and collectibles appraiser, author, collector, columnist, educator, and lecturer, host of WHATCHA GOT?
Maruchi Santana
Founder, The Brand Extension Agency.
Debra Shriver
Vice president and chief communications officer, Hearst Corporation, co-founder, UNICEF Snowflake Ball.
Katherine C. Tobin, Ph.D.
Former Governor, U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors.
Stamp proposals are to be submitted in writing to the following address:
Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee
c/o Stamp Development
U.S. Postal Service
475 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Room 3300
Washington, DC 20260-3501
The campaign to have Gibran honored with a stamp has met the same resistance that other efforts to recognize the achievements of American Areas have met with in the past.
In Chicago, for example, the Mayor’s Office has rejected repeated efforts to rename streets in honor of American Arabs, even though street renaming ordinances for others, including Israeli leaders, have been passed routinely.
Gibran was born in Lebanon and died in 1931. His inspirational collection of 26 fictional prose poetry essays, “The Prophet,” became a best seller that continues in popularity today. The Prophet was published in 1923 and has sold more than 100 million copies and has been translated into 40 languages.
Ray Hanania
The Arab Daily News