It was a day like any other for James Brown Jr. He was about halfway through the same route in Virginia Beach, Va., that he’d worked for 10 years—walking up to familiar house after familiar house, stopping to exchange pleasantries with neighbors sitting on their front porches to take in a bit of the Atlantic breeze. As Brown dropped off the mail at each home, he always made a note of what was normal and what was not—if windows that were usually open to the fresh air were shut tight or if the usual dog wasn’t barking hysterically at his presence. As Letter Carriers (NALC) members know, Brown’s job is about much more than delivering the mail.
“You’re part of that community,” said Brown, who is a member of NALC’s Virginia Beach Branch 2819. “You keep your eyes and ears out for them.”
That’s why when Brown heard faint cries for help from the home of an elderly couple—where he knew the wife was the sole caretaker for her husband as he recovered from a recent heart bypass surgery— he did everything he could to help.
The doors of the house were locked, so Brown ended up pushing his way through the kitchen window. There he found the woman lying on the floor—the phone dangling just out of her reach. She was in obvious pain, her husband was in bed unable to move or do anything to help. Brown called 911 and the closest family member and then stayed with the couple until help arrived. After the ambulance left, Brown did the obvious thing—he continued on his rounds.
Brown is just one example of the strong legacy of service that is inherent in NALC’s way of doing business. NALC recognizes “heroes” such as Brown on a monthly basis, letter carriers who pull people from burning homes, resuscitate an unconscious man or intercept a burglary. Each year, six heroes are selected out of the hundreds doing heroic deeds every day.
“Once a year we honor the best of the best,” said Pam Donato, special assistant to NALC President Fredric Rolando. “They are able to perform these good deeds in their communities because they are there every day.”
NALC members also participate in a carrier alert program, through which they receive formal training on identifying signs of distress, such as an unusual accumulation of mail. Seniors and people with disabilities sign up for the free program so if something happens, their letter carrier will know to contact the United Way, which then notifies friends, relatives and the local police.
“This program exists to formalize what we do every day,” Donato said.
Beyond the heroics they perform on their daily routes, NALC members help their communities in myriad other ways—from raising millions of dollars for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) to collecting more than 1 billion pounds of food for the hungry.
Every year on the second Saturday in May (mark your calendars now), NALC puts on the largest one-day food drive in the nation. Letter carries across the country collect donated food along their routes, which is then sorted and taken to local food banks. The annual food drive is a massive undertaking—in the past 20 years, NALC has collected a total of 1.130 billion pounds of food.
“It’s natural for letter carriers to be involved, they see the need every day,” said Paula Miller, who helps Christopher Jackson, national business agent for Region 1, coordinate the food drive in California. “We’re up close and personal with everyone in America.”
For the Orange County Food Bank in Garden Grove, Calif., the NALC food drive is the largest contributor each year, with an average of 300,000 pounds of food generated annually. That translates to a 20-pound box of groceries for 15,000 local families, estimated Mark Lowry, director of the food bank.
“[The letter carriers] are the only entity that goes to every home in America six days a week,” Lowry said. “It makes it more convenient for the donor than we could possibly imagine. It’s a lot of work for the letter carriers.”
Melissa Hoke, a NALC member of Arizona Merged Branch 1902, decided three years ago that she would launch a rummage sale to raise funds for MDA. She soon discovered that the rummage sale did more than raise money—it helped the people in the neighborhood who couldn’t afford to buy new clothes or household goods, and it helped the local charities who received anything that didn’t sell at the sale.
“The people in the neighborhood, they start banging on the door beginning in March, wondering when our sale is going to be,” Hoke said. “I’ve been a letter carrier since 1985 and MDA is our baby—we’re always trying to think of something new to do to raise money.”
In addition to Hoke’s rummage sale, Branch 1902 and other branches across the country put on everything from bowl-a-thons to Texas Hold’em tournaments to help local MDA chapters send children with muscle-damaging diseases to summer camp, facilitate support groups or fund research grants.
“It’s unique that a group [like NALC] puts on so many events throughout the year,” said Megan Perez, executive director of MDA’s Phoenix West chapter. “We couldn’t do what we do without them.”
Across the country, NALC’s 15 regions, 2,500 local branches and nearly 300,000 members are committed to giving back to their communities because they know that their communities depend on them.
“There’s a lot more to us than sticking a piece of mail in a mailbox,” Hoke said. “We see what’s going on in our community, we want to help.”
