TO OUR READERS

By BRUCE HALLETT/PRESIDENT

It is a tribute that the co-founder of this magazine would have relished. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth next year, Henry R. Luce will be featured on a postage stamp. His iron-jawed visage, so familiar to those of us at TIME, will adorn No. 57 of the Postal Service's ongoing Great Americans series, honoring men and women who have helped shape the nation's history. "Henry Luce set the standard by which publications are judged," says Postmaster General Marvin Runyon. "His passionate belief in the importance and power of the written word and his unmatched devotion to excellence created a legacy that endures today."

The Luce stamp, which will be released in the spring, adds his name to a roster that includes U.S. Presidents (Thomas Jefferson and Harry Truman), warriors (Admiral Chester Nimitz and Chief Crazy Horse), writers (Margaret Mitchell and Bret Harte) and artists (John James Audubon and Mary Cassatt). The diversity of the list would have been particularly pleasing to Luce, who had a journalist's abiding curiosity about people and their work.

The stamp's issuance happens to coincide with the 75th anniversary of TIME, the first of the four Luce-created magazines that changed forever the way news is read and understood. TIME's first issue bore the date March 3, 1923, and was the first foray into publishing for Luce, about to turn 25 and just a few years out of Yale. The boundless self-confidence that created TIME would sustain his second magazine, FORTUNE, through a rocky birth that was announced just as the stock market crashed in 1929. Against the advice of colleagues who warned him to retreat, Luce persevered, and so did FORTUNE. In 1936 he brought out LIFE. His last invention, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, was launched with an initial circulation of 450,000, the largest in magazine history. Today, Time Inc. comprises 30 magazines with a circulation of more than 25 million around the world.

The hand-engraved image on the stamp is based on a 1962 picture taken on the island of Majorca by Alfred Eisenstadt, one of LIFE's--and this century's--great photojournalists, whom Luce hired in 1936. Reproduced as a drawing on TIME's cover when Luce died in 1967, this particular photograph captures the formidable intelligence and fierce concentration that made Luce a great editor--and now, officially, a Great American.