It probably comes as no shock to anyone that the U.S. Postal Service is having a hard time staying in business these days. There was a time when the only way to send a letter or other document to someone was through the good ol' U.S. Mail. That was before the advent of overnight courier services and a little thing called the Internet. E-mail has long ago become the favorite way for people to disseminate information and it soon will be supplanted by social media.
So what about the future of the USPS? It is now not-always-so-affectionately known as "snail mail." It's no longer a question of whether the postal service will be profitable, but just how many billions will it lose? There is talk of eliminating Saturday delivery to cut costs. Some rural communities may be asked to go fetch their mail from the post office rather than have it delivered.
This past week, the USPS did something unintentional that made it relevant again. It delivered a letter. The letter was written by a nun and mailed to a woman studying to enter the sisterhood who was residing at a Stockton, Calif., convent. Nothing too extraordinary about that, except that the letter had been written back in 1937 and was delivered 73 years late. The convent student, Marie Frugone, gave up her pursuit of the calling shortly after the letter was written and tragically died just one year before getting to read the sentiments her friend had sent her all those years ago.
It's not the first time that a letter has been delivered decades late. In 2008, a Kansas woman received a letter marked "Return to Sender." The letter had been written 60 years earlier by a woman living at her same address. The letter-writer fretted over the defeat of Thomas Dewey by Harry Truman. She also spoke of the marvels of her new Westinghouse electric refrigerator.
It seems as if the only time the USPS is making news is when it is delivering letters decades after they were mailed. With that in mind, the Reporter has undertaken an exhaustive search and unearthed a treasure trove of letters that were postmarked years and decades ago, but have just recently been found and delivered.
Take, for instance, this letter written by President William McKinley to a U.S. senator in the early hours of Sept. 6, 1901:
Dear Bob,
Pan-Am has been a gas, but getting tired of the crowds. Me and the Missus are going to take the gorge trail ride at Niagara Falls this morning before heading back to the Temple of Music this afternoon. I need a day spent shaking hands and kissing babies like I need another hole in my head, but such is the life of a president, I guess.
See you back in Washington.
William
Then there was this little gem sent by a baseball scout in Little Rock, Ark., to one of his relatives on April 14, 1947:
Dear Cleavis,
Well, I've a good hard look at it from all angles and I am convinced that no player from the Negro Leagues will ever be good enough to play Major League Baseball. This Robinson kid that they're all buzzing about is just a fad that will fade away like one of those tattoos you get at the bottom of a box of Cracker Jack.
Mark my words, Cleav, baseball is and always will be a lily-white sport.
Yours truly,
Jeb
Sometimes a found letter speaks to a new beginning, but in this missive sent by a Buffalo weatherman to his mother in Boise, Idaho, on Jan. 27, 1977, it was unwittingly his one-way ticket out of town and out of his industry.
Dear Mom,
Hope all is well with you and Pops. Things are going great for me here in Buffalo. My Nielsens have been strong and there is talk of a raise and a promotion.
Had a good laugh this morning. The guys on the other two stations are calling for some sort of a storm bordering on a blizzard heading this way. Some kind of crazy talk about gale-force winds blowing all of the Lake Erie snow into impassable drifts.
I checked my maps and radar, and see nothing but blue skies ahead. I'm going to go on today and tell people to stop it with the runs on the grocery stores and all of the worrying being overheard on the CB channels. It's going to be just another sunny day in Buffalo.
Tell Pops to start picking out what color Cadillac he wants, because Sonny Boy's star is definitely rising in Buffalo.
Love and Hugs,
Mike
A message can sometimes be brief but profound all at once. For instance, take this letter sent to O.J. Simpson by one of his longtime friends on June 11, 1994:
Juice,
Check yourself, Bro. You know I got your back, but for real É check yourself!
A.C.
Finally, there was this correspondence, dated March 18, 1971, from an urban designer to then-Niagara Falls mayor E. Dent Lackey:
Dear Mayor Lackey,
With careful consideration I have, as you have asked of me, looked over your plans for urban renewal in Niagara Falls. Please take no offense when I say to you that your plan is disastrous and will cripple Niagara Falls for decades.
Do not, I repeat, do not tear down Old Falls Street. The shops and architecture there will never be replaced. Do not remove Jefferson Avenue and erect a convention center there. That center will fail and will more than likely be turned into a gambling den or some other type of haven for human vice.
Preserve your downtown, mayor. If you do, the people of your city will remember you always as a man of vision, a vision that was cemented because you refused to buy into the myth that newer is always better.
Yours truly,
Robert Soothsayer
As happy as we were to have found these snapshots of time stuck behind mail windows and inside delivery chutes, we can't help but wonder how the course of human history might have been changed had they been delivered in a timely fashion.
One thing is certain: If you're looking for a scapegoat, there's never a finer one to be had than the U.S. Mail.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 27, 2010 |