In AIDAFlash number 119, December 2007, the enthusiastic then President Costantino Gironi wrote:
“It is now official: the 40th” Aerophilatelia Day “of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of our association will be held in Milan. The celebrations will take place on March 7th, 8th and 9th 2008, on the occasion of Milanofil 2008, at the Milan City Fair …
… to celebrate and commemorate this event, the most logical and appropriate venue could only be Milan “…
… we would like this goliardic spirit that fifty years ago animated a group of enthusiastic lovers of air postal history to be collected by all our members who carried on out of pride, but above all out of respect for those who preceded us, unfortunately many of them they left us, giving us a great inheritance ”.
Expectations did not go unfulfilled, as the great organizational effort was crowned with equally success; many exhibitors (see list below), many journalists who gave life to the single issue, many members who attended the meeting, many were present at the fiftieth anniversary lunch. In short, the Jubilee of the AlDA has found fertile ground to reinvigorate and cement the friendship between the members, fully responding to the expectations of the organizers.
Here is the list of exhibitors:
• AJMAR ERNESTO: “Flights to and from Turin”
• AMOROSO ANDREA: “The seaplane of I9I7”
• BARBERIS GIORGIO: “Forty years of aircraft on the” red “
• BERGAMASCHI BERNARDINO: “50th anniversary of the Transatlantic Cruise ITALY-BRAZIL”
• BINI ROMANO: “France: pioneers of flight”
• BRUNATI NICOLA: “Pioneers of air”
• BURATTI LUIGI: “First airmail experiments”
• CATTANEI RAIMONDO: “Faster than sound”
• CORSARI BRUNA: “Milan in the history of flight”
• CROSA VITTORIA: “AGUSTA: a name – a brand – a company”
• DI MENTO ELIGIO: “Air Tour of Sicily (selection)”
• FREDA ALBERTO: “1926 – Italian air mail is born”
• GIRONI COSTANTINO: “You fly to Milan”
• GOTTARDI ROBERTO: “Special flights from Milan 1976-1988 (selection)”
• LENSI LINO: “Air mail from Libya (1929-1942)”
• LONGHI FIORENZO: “Complementary documents to the Milan Air Circuit”
• MAIOLO ROBERTO: “Scout air mail”
• MERELLI GIOVANNI: “African aerial destinations during the Kingdom period”
• MILANESI CARLO: “Helicopter flights in Italy (arrivals and departures from Milan)”
• MONTAGNA EMANUELE: “The giant of air”
• NEGRO VITTORIO: “Correspondence from the North Pole: under and above the ice”
• PARISI VINCENZO: “Air mail in Italy: the Thirties”
• REITER BRUNO: “Milan: arrivals and departures”
• RICCITELLI FLAVIO: “Reduced rate greeting cards”
• TRENTA MASSIMO: “The Forlanini airship and the City of Milan”
• VIGO RICCARDO: “Days of Aerophilatelia”
• VILLA MARIO: “From SALYUT-3 to the International Space Station”
And this is the rich program of the event:
2008 Program
As highlighted above, our event was part of the wider context of the Milanofil conference, alongside other philatelic events, such as the final of Campionato Cadetti, where Poste Italiane welcomed us with enthusiasm, thanks to the availability of Dr. Silvana Zeppieri and Mr. Danilo Bogoni for their constant help, allowing us to have a special exhibition space for the showcases destined to contain the twenty-seven collections of the exhibiting members. Mostly unpublished collections, celebrating aeronautical events that had taken place in Milan, which the audience appreciated and carefully viewed.
The days were not those of official ceremonies, but a friendly gathering of Italian aerophilatelists.
The inauguration took place on Friday 7 March and the post office attached to the exhibition stamped the correspondence with the cancellation of the “fiftieth anniversary”.
The special postcard, published by our association, bore a drawing by the painter Ugo Farina on the reverse, which portrayed the AIDA logo repeated in a spiral fifty times, offering a very good idea of the path and the path taken until then.
On Saturday March 8th, another postmark, this time dedicated to the 40th “Aerophilatelia Day”, always available at the post office, using the same postcards.
As can also be seen from the design of the cancellation, the “Day” on this occasion wanted to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the first flight experiments in Italy, carried out by Leon Delagrange on June 11st 1908 in Milan. An event that is also remembered by a stele placed outside the Fair in 1935, on the occasion of the International Air Show.
Then at 10.00 the meeting of the AIDA members In a room below, the “green” room, 25 members met to discuss important topics concerning the association. But before each word, the President Costantino Gironi invited all present to a minute of meditation to remember the missing members.
Many topics were discussed, concerning the life, especially the future, of our association. But then, having ascertained the presence of one of the founding members, Giovanni Desimoni, it was obligatory to invite him to make his voice heard on the fifty years he constantly lived in the ranks of the association. According to him, the observation that AIDA has always kept the lines drawn fifty years earlier over time, without betraying the sentiments that had animated the founding members, was a very welcome note.
While the men were busy philatelically, in the afternoon a side initiative, dedicated to the spouses, was much appreciated: the masterfully guided cultural visit to the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, in which a cultured nobleman, who lived towards the middle of the 1800s, lover of collecting and of art, he transformed his home into a museum of paintings, sculptures, carpets, porcelain, goldsmiths, fabrics, weapons, which later became public heritage.
On Sunday March 9th, the “fiftieth anniversary” lunch, which was attended by 34 people, which was followed by the awarding of all exhibitors, the writers of the articles prepared for the single issue and those who collaborated in the success of the event, to which a finely engraved tray was delivered, contained in a special case.
Finally, with the help of the Italphil company in Rome, after those in Rome in 2005 and Orbetello in 2006, a single number of eighty pages was created, which differs from the previous ones due to the high number of color reproductions that accompany the articles on various aerofilatelic topics, all very interesting. A publication that can appear very well in the library of an aerofilatelist or sympathizer. It collects fourteen articles by our members, on various topics of aerophilately.
