Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 21, 1993 TAG: 9302210229
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THIS POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS NICE
THE JOB OF a letter carrier combines tedious office work with the opportunity to get out and meet people.\ When Paul Mazey walks into a building at Valley View Village apartments in Roanoke, an elderly woman greets him with a smile and a problem.
"I'm disgusted," the woman said. "That darned refrigerator."
Mazey advises the woman where to look to find a new one.
No, Mazey is not an appliance repairman. He's a mail carrier.
And after he completes his rounds of the apartment complex that day, the woman's smiling face can be seen at her apartment window. In a daily ritual, she waves at him and he waves back in a kind of symbolic salute to her well-being.
"Once you have a regular route, its kind of like family," said Mazey, a lean, red-haired, freckle-faced man of 45.
For more than a decade, Mazey's "family" has been the 484 postal customers he serves on his Northwest Roanoke route, which includes Rutgers, Pawling and Daleville streets and Cornell, Vancouver, Dorchester and Floraland drives.
"I know a lot of them. I really do," he said.
While neither rain nor snow nor hail nor dark of night shall keep Mazey from his appointed rounds, he finds his rounds sometimes take a little longer because of concern for his customers.
Even with those delays, Mazey, a West Virginia native, delivers packages and letters with express-mail speed. He's worn out the cartilage in both his big toes from walking more miles than he can count.
Many of his stops are at the homes of senior citizens, where he takes time to chat.
"This is our buddy," said Hubert Whitlock, 74. "When he doesn't show up, we go looking."
Bob Emmons, 77, said Mazey's personal service endears him to the postal customers along the route.
"He's the first friend I had in Roanoke," said Emmons, who moved here from Florida. "In Florida, they have the Welcome Wagon. Paul is Roanoke's welcome person."
Emmons said Mazey will go out of his way to bring senior citizens the cards they need to temporarily stop their mail. He's also been known to save them a trip to the post office by bringing them a bundle of mail that was being held.
Beyond his "official" duties, Mazey helped save two elderly women the $500 they were planning to pay to have a tree cut down. He persuaded someone to chop the tree for the firewood.
"I've got a lot of older people on this route," Mazey said. "You do a lot of things for human compassion."
In keeping with that role, Mazey, a father of two, keeps his eye on the houses of postal patrons he knows are out of town. Some ask him to make sure no one has broken in.
"If you see a window broken, you say, `Hey, this window is not normally broken,' " he said. "Who would know the house better than the mailman?"
Non-humans along his route seem less receptive to Mazey.
Jessie, a black dog, barks as Mazey walks toward her but runs the other way when he gets too close and calls her name. Another dog sits under a carport and barks until he walks by. The dog whirls and bangs its head into a pole.
The public life of a mail carrier can be a far cry from the tedium that prevails before daybreak at thousands of post offices around the country. Mazey, like his colleagues everywhere, spends those morning hours sorting the huge piles of mail.
As he enters the post office in the morning, there is usually a 2-foot stack of letter-sized mail on his desk to be sorted. Other boxes of mail sit in the floor awaiting his attention.
With the sound of rock music in the background, he begins sorting.
"The first thing I do is turn on Slam and Sally and Coach Sammy on K-92," said Mazey as he reaches for his radio.
Mazey presides at a corner desk topped with trays for each house on his route.
His work station is one of 32, where mail carriers hurriedly sort through packages and letters to ready them for delivery. Some laugh and joke. But all keep their minds on the job - which is essential to delivering the mail correctly.
With 484 slots, Mazey knows it's easy to make a mistake. Often the addresses on the trays are hard to find. In his nearly two decades with the post office, he's learned to carefully scrutinize the mail to make sure it doesn't get into the wrong slot.
"You can deliver the mail correctly for 10 years," Mazey said. "They'll always remember the one you misdeliver."
Sometimes, his knowledge of the route keeps mail from going astray. Unlike the ZIP code machine that has reduced delivery to a numerical equation, Mazey keeps track of the human variables.
He often knows who's moved, who's in the hospital and who's died. When a letter appears with the wrong address, he often can catch it.
As he continues to sort, more mail is delivered to his work station. A man comes by to give him his truck keys and keys to postal boxes for his day's work. For security reasons, Mazey cannot take the keys home with him.
Finally, about 9 a.m., 2 1/2 hours after he arrived at the office, he loads his mail in a canvas cart and pushes it toward the door to begin his rounds.
"Terry, you have a good day," Mazey says to Terry Doss, a carrier in the next work station.
"See you, J.R.," he says to another carrier.
He walks over the a rack and picks up a vehicle card, which keeps track of the mileage he drives.
"Everything you do in the post office, you're accountable for," he said.
And that accountability, both to the organization and the public, he says keeps the excitement in his job.
"I really believe people perceive us as dedicated and hard-working individuals," he said. "The people want their mail, and they want it on time. I try to treat them with respect."
That respect is rewarded by satisfied customers.
"He's just a perfect postman," said Ruth Reed, 83, one of his patrons.
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