By null, Times Staff WriterA friend for 37 years to the small community of Lacoochee retires from her post. Shirley Ann Marsee will be missed for the little things.
LACOOCHEE - When the flag comes down outside the post office Friday, postmaster Shirley Ann Marsee will take a last look around and get ready to put out her own forwarding address.
Her 37-year postal career at Lacoochee, 33537, comes to an end.
She's going home.
"I've always liked being here, being part of this town," she said. "Everybody's got to have a job; you might as well have a job that you like."
Marsee, 60, started at the Lacoochee post office in 1966 as an assistant.
It cost a nickel to post a first-class letter, and Marsee remembers hanging up the old leather mailbag along the railroad tracks where it could be snatched from a pole by the passing train.
Looking around the post office last week, Marsee explained how the new computerized system takes care of much of the work now and then uploads data to a bigger computer far away, automatically, in the dead of night.
But with retirement, Marsee said it's time to go back to her family's farm in Georgia, where her three children live. She's ready for a new career raising beef cattle and meat goats.
She's been gone from the farm a long time.
By the early 1970s, Marsee was postmaster and ran the office pretty much single handedly for the next 30 years. She has a part-time helper, Wanda Singleterry, and a cleaning crew, but many days she's on her own.
The mail comes in about 6:30 a.m., and by 7 Marsee said she's in the office sorting the various letters and bills and junk mail and packages for more than 700 post office box holders.
It's done by 9 a.m.
Then the residents she knows as friends start streaming in.
On a day last week, she helped a woman with poor eyesight fill out some paperwork.
"I won't be here next time," she warned. "I don't know if the new person is going to do this."
She sold a single stamp, inquired about a friend who had died, and helped Marsha Lindsey select an oversized envelope.
"That won't fit in this one," Marsee said, holding up one size. "This one's only 10 cents more."
"She's going to be missed," Lindsey said. "This is the best service of any post office. And even if you ever have to stand in line, she's still friendly. It's the little things she does, you know, "Oh, here, let me do that for you,' that you don't see anywhere else."
Marsee's name tag sports her first names, "Shirley Ann," in big letters. The last name is an afterthought in a town where everyone has to see her once a day to collect their mail.
There is no delivery; the entire community's business passes through the tiny doors on rows of silver post office boxes.
But sometimes, Marsee said she has made special deliveries.
In a small community without a town hall or a police department, the post office becomes the center, she said. She recalls telephone messages from frantic relatives, some asking her to check on a loved one who hadn't called in a while or asking her to deliver the bad news about a relative's death.
"I've always enjoyed the job because of the people. I love the people. The people to me are the pleasure in this job," Marsee said. "I love you all, and I will miss you."
Marsee said she plans to work through the coming week, right up until her last day Friday. Then she'll pack up what's left at her house and move north.
Her new address: Rebecca, Ga., 31783.