Second-oldest U.S. Catholic college marks 200th with new postal card

Published: 2008-04-29

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- More than 1,000 stamp collectors, alumni, faculty and students flocked to Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Md., April 26 to celebrate as the U.S. Postal Service issued a new 27-cent stamped postal card that pays tribute to the bicentennial of the second-oldest Catholic university in the country. After the stamped card was unveiled, the Maryland Symphony Orchestra played Ludwig van Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony," which was first performed Dec. 22, 1808, in Austria, a little more than two months after a cross was planted on Mary's Mountain to inaugurate construction of the new university and seminary, said Linda Sherman, director of communications at Mount St. Mary's. "It was a great evening with a full house," Sherman said of the event at the university's campus in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains. "It's a wonderful remembrance of what we were and what we've become." Stamp collectors from as far away as Oregon attended the event, she said.

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