The Lick Heard Around the World

Carol Channing licks the first Thornton Wilder commemorative postage stamp; Photo by Bob Child

On April 17, 1997, the United States Postal Service honored Thornton Wilder's 100th birthday by releasing a commemorative stamp in its author’s series. The ceremony took place in Thornton Wilder Hall at the Miller Memorial Public Library in Hamden, Connecticut, Wilder’s home address starting in 1930. It was attended by officials of the USPS, residents of the Town of Hamden and the State of Connecticut, the Connecticut Fife and Drum Corps, and a general public of several hundred.
 
The 1-ounce stamp was based on an oil painting by Michael Deas. When asked to sign off on the stamp before its release, the Wilder family urged one correction: changing Wilder’s eyes from brown to blue. The change was made.
 
The stamp pictures Thornton Wilder with his chin resting in his folded hands. (The original photo from which the image was copied had Wilder holding a cigarette!)  In the background, images of rolling green hills, a church, and a house, symbolize Grover’s Corners--a New Hampshire Village, which gradually becomes the world in OUR TOWN, the author’s most famous work and a play performed throughout the world. 

Tappan Wilder and Carol Channing unveiling the stamp

To celebrate this grand event, and to the delight of the USPS, the Wilders invited Carol Channing to be part of the unveiling. Channing, who performed the role of Dolly Levi in HELLO, DOLLY!, based on Wilder's farce, THE MATCHMAKER, over 5000 times during her career, knew and loved Thornton, and, holding a photograph of them together, spoke movingly about him as part of the ceremony.  To cheers, she and Tappan Wilder together drew back the curtain on an enlarged copy of the new stamp.  Channing then adjourned with photographers to a special room where she performed what is remembered as “the lick heard around the world” —the first lick — on a first day cover she addressed to her son. After the ceremony, Channing, Tappan, and his sister Catharine spent more than an hour signing first day covers for attending fans.