Bernstein Stamp Unveiled On CBS

The U.S. Postal Service will issue a new stamp next year to honor Leonard Bernstein, the composer and conductor who died ten years ago yesterday at the age of 72. The design was first made public on CBS News Sunday Morning.

An emergency summons to fill in as conductor of a New York Philharmonic concert in 1943 put Bernstein into the national spotlight, and he was rarely out of it again, reports CBS News Sunday Morning anchor Charles Osgood.

From 1958 to 1969 he was the Philharmonic's Music Director, and his televised Young People's Concerts on CBS introduced a whole new generation across the country to the classical repertoire.

His scores for the musicals On The Town, Candide, and West Side Story are classics in their own right.

By law, ten years must pass from a person's death before the Postal Service can issue a commemorative stamp.

But not a day...not an hour...surely not even a minute passes when somebody somewhere in America isn't listening to the music of Leonard Bernstein.

No date has been announced for the new stamp. Bernstein was born August 25, 1918 in Lawrence, Mass.

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