This is a first for Bevil Cachets...a dual cancellation honoring the last living day (topical event) and a first day of issue (FDOI).  These covers were first cancelled in Albany, Georgia on June 10, 2004.  I affixed 3 stamps to the envelope for that cancel.  One of the stamps is a 22 cent Georgia Statehood stamp and the other two are 8.4 cent stamps featuring a piano and the caption “Peace Unites A Nation Like Harmony In Music”.  Well, life moved on and the envelopes stayed tucked away for over 9 years.  Then one day the USPS announced their release of a Ray Charles stamp to be issued on        September 23, 2013 in Los Angeles, California.  So what you see before you is that, an  unplanned, yet         complementary, combination of stamps and            cancellations.  Ray Charles Robinson was born in Albany, Georgia in 1930.  His family was poor, so poor in fact that he would recall, “Even compared to other blacks, we were on the bottom of the ladder looking up at  everyone else.  Nothing below us except the ground.”  Ray began losing his sight at the age of five and went completely blind by the age of seven due to glaucoma.  But not before witnessing the death of his younger brother George.  Sadly, his brother drowned in the  family’s laundry tub at the age of four.  Ray always felt a sense of guilt, although he was just a child himself and could not save his brother.

Read the article in its entirety in the May 2014

Bevil newsletter, which accompanies the cover.