By Raza Gustaitis
Staff Reporter
Wednesday, February 21, 1962; Page A1

Minutes after John Glenn stepped on the deck of the destroyer Noa yesterday a postage stamp commemorating his flight was issued for sale throughout the country – to the surprise of most of the post masters. And therein lies a story.

It goes back months when a designer, an engraver, and some printers were assigned to work at odd hours or at home, and to accomplish a top-secret task.

The task: to produce a philatelic tribute to America's first man in orbital flight. The result: 100 million blue 4-cent stamps with a golden space capsule riding along the horizon under a starry sky and above, the inscriptions: "U.S. Man in Space" and "Project Mercury."

The Department noted that this was the first time a commemorative stamp was issued almost simultaneously with the event it memorialized.

The idea was conceived by Postmaster General J. Edward Day and Deputy Postmaster General JL W. Brawley. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration agreed to cooperate.

So that no word of the project would leak out, all communications between the Post Office Department and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing were handled verbally and all models, designs and die proofs were carried back and forth by special messenger.

A designer seemingly took leave from his job. He actually went to work at home. An engraver sneaked into the Bureau on weekends to do the lettering. The picture engraver came in late at night and weekends.

When it came time to print the stamps, a press room was completely sealed off from the rest of the plants and employees who had once worked on stamps but now were in the currency section were called in.

Because some Bureau workers started to wonder about the sealed off room, a false rumor was spread: that maybe vari-colored money was tried out in there.

The shipping, too, was done on weekends. Postal inspectors in 301 localities received word they would get sealed packages with Post Office Department labels which they were under no circumstances to open until told to do so.

A special conference telephone system was set up and postal inspectors were told they would be called at an unspecified time. The call came when Glenn landed.

Minutes later news of the stamp was on television and two hours later 70,000 of the stamps had been sold at the Benjamin Franklin post office here: ''The people just came from nowhere,'' said Philatelic Agent Harry Cowger. All District post offices had received a supply yesterday.

Annie Glenn, wife of the astronaut, received a souvenir album, as did his mother and father. He's to get one too.

The Post Office will make available today one million "first day covers" – envelopes with the stamp and a Cape Canaveral postmark bearing the date and time of the flight's completion. They will be on sale today at 5 cents each at the Philatelic Sales Agency at the Benjamin Franklin station and in Cocoa, Fla.