To Our Readers

Sometimes an oversight creates an opportunity. When TIME's editors missed the chance to put Charles Lindbergh on the cover right after his flight across the Atlantic in 1927, they made up for it at year's end by creating their own reason: the Man of the Year. It caught on because it was a logical extension of Henry Luce's concept of the newsmagazine: to record history by seeing it through its most important personalities. To celebrate 75 years of Person of the Year and to launch a traveling exhibition that will tour the country, TIME and sponsor Scudder Investments threw a party last week at the U.S. Custom House in Manhattan, where we gathered many of the past cover subjects and, in some cases, their descendants. This was one party where you didn't need that photographer who could produce a framed picture of your face in a Person of the Year cover.