SO YOU thought we’re having a mail delivery problem in America these days? You should have been here in 1957. The Postal Service was struggling with deficits, and Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield had had enough: no more mail on Saturdays!
Summerfield’s mail-free Saturdays were limited to one Saturday. As of the following week, the postman returned to his regular six-day schedule. Arthur was a descendant of the Van Rensselaers from Nijkerk, from a branch that had named themselves Renselier. Summerfield’s father’s name was William Henry, for Prince Willem (Hendrik) III of Orange Nassau (see also the Tyler grandson story in this week’s edition). A grandfather was called Renselier, and that’s where the Black blood ran. At some point a Van Rensselaer had married a dark-skinned woman, which made that branch of the family proud. The Renseliers gave their daughters fancy names, Freelove, Temperance, Thankful, and they were free people, liberated from slavery.
AMERICA OWES its post offices to Willem III who was, at the time, besides stadtholder of the Netherlands, also king of England, which included America. He ordered to start up “in the chief parts an office or offices for receiving, dispatching and delivering letters and pacquets.” The chief parts didn’t immediately include remote places such as Maine where this paper is published, and it wasn’t until a century ago that Summerfield’s predecessor George Cortelyou, scion of the Cortillon, Van Dyke, Hoogland and Stoothof families from Utrecht, closed that gap.
Arthur Summerfield was hurt by the bad publicity he received with his one-time no-mail Saturday, so he set out to improve his image and that of the postal service. He reserved a spot on the USS Barbero submarine, and had the warhead of a cruise missile replaced with a box containing 3,000 letters, all signed by himself. For the occasion, he temporarily assigned post office status to the vessel. On June 8, 1959, the Barbero launched the missile, and within twenty minutes the mail landed near the Jacksonville Post Office in Florida.
SUMMERFIELD was there and treated the press to enthusiastic statements. “This peacetime employment of a guided missile for the important and practical purpose of carrying mail, is the first known official use of missiles by any Post Office Department of any nation.” And it was, of course, “of historic significance to the peoples of the entire world.” Because “we stand on the threshold of rocket mail!”
Arthur Summerfield was a man of action. He hadn’t finished school, sold Chevrolets, built Michigan’s largest dealership, and was now the postmaster general who was going to give America the fastest mail delivery in the world. “Before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles.”
Just like no-mail Saturday, rocket mail was a one-off. President Eisenhower said no. Ten years after Summerfield’s stunt, Neil Armstrong and his buddy Buzz Aldrin from Maastricht reached the moon. Arthur Summerfield from Nijkerk was back to selling cars by that time.
Postmaster Arthur Summerfield
