Special Delivery from R. A. Kimble

R.A.Kimble
Hotel Indiana
Ft.Wayne, Ind.

neatly typewritten in the upper left corner of a Special Delivery - Air Mail cover postmarked FORT WAYNE MAY 25 6PM 1938 IND. The cover was franked with a 1936 16 Cent Great Seal Air Mail Special Delivery stamp with Duplex cancel.

The addressee: C. Albert Perz, Room 2001, 212 West Washington St., Chicago, Ill.

Enclosed in the envelope is a type-written letter on the Hotel Indiana stationery to the addressee nicknamed Cap.  Kimble, the letter writer, was to give a talk at the Northern Indiana Philatelic Society annual exhibition and banquet at 7pm on May 26 in the hotel LaSalle in South Bend. Cap was to meet him at 6pm in South Bend by taking the South Shore line train.

The letter was dated May 25, 1938 and signed with the initials RAK.

I stumbled upon this philatelic item on eBay last year as I was browsing for hotel-related items for my collection.

Who was R.A.Kimble? Clearly he was an invited speaker to a stamp club, possibly a philatelist. If you were to Google just R.A. Kimble, the search results would not have been helpful.  However with philatelist added to the search, you would have learned that R.A. Kimble was Colonel Ralph Archibald Kimble, philatelic author and speaker, and editor of the American Philatelic Society's monthly journal American Philatelist. Kimble published his first book "How to Collect Stamps" in 1932 and had a radio show "Stamp Talk" on Chicago's WMAQ.

Who was Cap? If you Googled C Albert Perz as it was typed on the cover, the result pointed to an article in the August 1923 issue of Bell Telephone News.  Perz, known as C A P, first joined Illinois Bell on July 25, 1912. A graduate of Northwestern University, he had worked in various departments at the Illinois Bell Telephone Company, and was active in various social groups in the company, and was a frequent contributor to the company newspaper.

The address 212 West Washington St was the office address of Illinois Bell. Apparently C A P was still with the company when the letter was addressed to him in 1938.

I Googled Perz philately and the results had C A Perz listed as the author of "The World in Miniature" which appeared in the 1937 American Philatelist. Further results showed that he had also published other philatelic articles and his full name was Clarence Albert Perz.

What about Northern Indiana Philatelic Society? According to a post to Beard family genealogy site, the stamp club was founded in 1923. The South Bend-based club held meetings every second and fourth Tuesday at the Centre Township Library in recent years according to Linn's Stamp News (2010).

Hotel LaSalle was built in 1921 in downtown South Bend and operated as a hotel until 1973. The original 9-story hotel had 233 rooms plus dining rooms and stores. In 2016, the property was renovated and reopened with 67 apartments in upper floors and commercial space on the ground floor.

As for Hotel Indiana where Kimble stayed, the 7-story hotel opened in 1928 in downtown Fort Wayne and closed in 1971. However the Embassy Theatre that was part of the complex was revived and continuously renovated over the past few decades.

This was a cover of two philatelists and two hotels philatelically connected with a special delivery from the year 1938.

P.S. Did C.A.P. receive the special delivery air mail in time on May 26 in Chicago to catch the train to South Bend to join R.A.K at the annual N.I.P.S. event?