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February 27, 2007
2007 DISTINGUISHED TOPICAL PHILATELIST AWARD
TO BE PRESENTED TO RAY E. CARTIER
The American Topical Association selection committee, headed by Donald W. Smith, has
announced that their selection for the 2007 Distinguished Topical Philatelist (DTP) Award
will be Ray E. Cartier, currently the Executive Director of that organization. The Award
will be conferred at the Awards Banquet for the National Topical Stamp Show in Irving,
Texas on Saturday evening, June 16th.
Ray Cartier began collecting at age 8 after finding stamps showing exotic animals and
places being sold by his barber. His interest waned in his late teens but returned in his
mid-twenties when he found his interest in manned space exploration to be available as a
postmarked history of space events on covers. Later the topics of aircraft, Jules Verne,
and Jacques Cartier were added to that interest as he sub-specialized in Primary Recovery
Ships, NASA VIP cards and the planet Mars among others. He has been awarded Gold medals
for several of his exhibits of Man In Space, VIP Cards and Primary Recovery Ships, along
with several “Most Popular” awards.
Ray’s service in philately began in 1973 when he and his wife, Karen, founded the
Mid-Cities Stamp Club and he served as their first president. With friends that he made as
a result of the club, he worked in organizing their first three stamp shows. The Club
awarded Ray and Karen by naming them Members Emeritus in 2004. In 1977 Ray co-chaired the
ATA’s TOPEX ’77 in Dallas.
In the early 1980’s his first writing recognition was his receiving the first Leon
Forsheimer Award by the Texas Philatelic Association for a series of articles written in
their journal. In 1992 he authored the Primary Recovery Ship Cover Handbook and in 2004 he
updated a Topical Collecting Handbook by John Groet, re-titling it, Topical Stamp
Collecting: A Universal Hobby for Seniors.
In the Space Unit of the ATA his background included serving as Awards Chairman, Vice
President and then as President for two terms of that 500 member organization over a period
of fourteen years. In 1998 he was the recipient of the Space Unit’s first Lester E. Winick
Award for Service to Philately. In the course of his studies he has identified the source
of counterfeit cancellations from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and determined a means of
identifying replicas of NASA’s VIP cards that were privately made to resemble those scarce
government printed cards. He is also the founder of the Aircraft Study Unit of the ATA.
Articles of his have appeared in Topical Time, LINN’s Stamp News, Mekeels, Global Stamp
News, Stamp Collector, the Texas Philatelist and in magazines in England, Belgium, Croatia
and South Africa. He was also published in American Way magazine among others. Currently
he writes a philatelic column that appears in the Lancaster (PA) Senior News and Mekeels
and Stamps as well as his regular articles in Topical Time.
In addition to being a 35 year member of the ATA he holds memberships in the Space Unit,
the Texas Philatelic Association, the Mask Study Unit the Jack Knight Airmail Society and
is a Director of the Mid-Cities Stamp Club. He is currently in his fifth year as the
Executive Director of the American Topical Association where he and his wife handle the
affairs of the organization from the Central Office in Arlington, Texas. Ray has given
seminars on both Astrophilately and on the American Topical Association at several shows
and club meetings, along with speaking on planetary exploration at several grammar school
science classes.
Professionally, after leaving the Air Force, Ray was involved in Material and Production
Control supervision and management, along with Military Procurement. During one period,
after a major layoff, he owned and operated a Print and Copy Shop for three years, later
using that experience to bring print-on-demand to the handbooks of the ATA. He received
General Dynamics’ President’s Awards in two different years for doing the most outstanding
job of cost avoidance at their Ft. Worth F-16 Aircraft production facility.
His volunteer efforts helped train him for working with volunteers at the ATA. He served 10
years as his American Red Cross Chapter’s Volunteer Coordinator of Disaster Volunteers
being given their Clara Barton Honor Award for Meritorious Volunteer Leadership in 1990.
The ATA has been selecting Distinguished Topical Philatelists from their membership since
1952.
For information on the world’s largest all-topical philatelic organization, contact the ATA
Central Office, P.O. Box 57, Arlington, Texas 76004-0057 (telephone: 1-817-274-1181; email
americantopical@msn.com; or visit their
website at
www.americantopicalassn.org.
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