Nevada post office raises breast cancer awareness with semipostal stamp

Nevada Daily Mail

The U.S. Postal Service in Nevada is participating in an annual breast cancer awareness initiative and creating a fun rivalry with the postmaster in Carl Junction during October, national breast cancer awareness month.

Nevada post office's postmaster, Julie Mader, said the breast cancer awareness stamp -- a semipostal stamp -- will be sold for 60 cents, and 11 cents of every stamp sold goes toward breast cancer research.

"By law, revenue from sales (minus postage and the reasonable reimbursement of costs to the postal service) is to be transferred to a selected executive agency or agencies," she said in an email. "Seventy percent goes to The National Institute of Health and 30 percent of it is given to the medical research part of the Department of Defense. It's set by law; this is how it's broken up."

Sharon Clark, postmaster of the U.S. Postal Service in Carl Juction "always beats everybody in the nation," Mader said. "She is a breast cancer survivor, and it's really close to her as far as what people go through, how she's been touched by it, how many people have been touched by breast cancer. And it's not that breast cancer is just for women, men can get it too.

Mader said she and Clark sold 49,000 breast cancer stamps in October. That total was the most in the country.

Mader and Clark worked together in 2005 at a post office in Butler where they sold the most breast cancer awareness stamps in their district with 800 post offices, Mader said.

"After Sharon became postmaster at Carl Junction, she really took it. She had a lot of support from the community, and when our post offices broke up -- managers of post offices have different areas, and she's in our area again. So she's getting us all fired up again, so I kind of threw up the baton and was like, 'Oh yeah'."

Mader jokingly suggested she would write 'Carl Junction, we're about to take you down' in the lawn outside her post office.

"We can't have this, we can't have it," she said, laughing.

The stamp, designed by Ethel Kessler of Bethesda, Md., was the first semipostal stamp. It began being issued July 29, 1998. The stamp has raised more than $80.1 million for breast cancer research. Mader "guestimated" last year the U.S. Postal Service raised around $7.8 million

"It touches people. I think a lot of people you speak with in the community know someone who's had a family member or friend affected by it. And that's what we are trying to do," Mader said. "Besides the fun of the friendly competition because you are actually doing something for the community and for the betterment of something we can hope to find the cure for. Fund the fight, and find a cure."