Gus Lund 1908-2008

We are very sorry to hear of the death of Gustav (Gus) Lund who had just recently managed to pass the century age of 100. Although never an officer of our TPO & Seapost Society he was a member of the society for 33 years (in two periods) from 1947 until he resigned at the age of 80. He was originally a member of the Universal Ship Cancellation Society and eventually President in the 1930's of what subsequently became a break away society, the MPS, the Maritime Postmark Society in which he held at various times just about every post including the Editor of their magazine the "Seaposter". The USCS was primarily involved in US Naval cancellations only while this new society was more interested in covers posted from Merchant vessels from all over the world and was responsible for making the collection of paquebot marks popular in the USA in philatelic postal history circles. He was a seminal figure in the world of collecting seapost and paquebot marks globally and was considered to be one of the founding fathers of the hobby along with others like Everett Erle, Bob Murphy and Edward Ceder. He was the author of "Paquebot marks of the Americas", published by himself in 1984 which gave a constructive view of paquebot marks in that area. There will be few serious collectors of modern maritime postal history who do not possess covers derived from Gus's indefatigable postings. He was a mine of information and was always ready and willing, even in recent years, to provide helpful and friendly responses to any queries. He made a major contribution to the world of seapost and paquebot cancellation collecting and we are proud that he was not only a long time member of our society but also such a stalwart of the MPS and we show their logo above in his honour.