James Dean Stamp

Having been a happy, naive, optimistic teenager of “the conformist ‘50s,” I was given quite a jolt into reality on that last day of September 1955, as I walked to work as a box boy and saw the tragic headline: “James Dean Killed!” History was relived as I avidly read (June 25) that he is being eulogized on a first-class stamp.

I have seen “East of Eden,” “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant,” but the first time I became aware of Dean was on the television show, “Schlitz Playhouse of Stars,” in a drama which epitomized Dean then and now, appropriately entitled “The Drifter.”

EDDIE CRESS

Los Angeles