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Very special delivery

It started when Nancy Grace would read her grandmother's mail to her. Now she's Florida's Postmaster of the Year.

By S.I. ROSENBAUM
Published September 16, 2005

GIBSONTON - Nancy Grace's grandmother was a gill net fisher. She never needed to learn to read. She baked cakes without recipes, and she never owned a car.

When her letters arrived, Nancy would read them aloud and write down the replies, too.

So maybe it's fate that Nancy Grace ended up where she is now.

In the Gibsonton post office, she takes an envelope from a customer with a smile.

The carnival owner across the counter says, "Hi, girl."

"When did you get back to town?" she asks. He asks after her mother.

Grace has been a postmaster since 1989, and she loves her work. This year, she was named Postmaster of the Year for the state of Florida by the National Association of Postmasters.

What does it take to do the job?

"Compassion," she says.

"It's like being a hairdresser, or a bartender," she said.

"People come in and tell you stories. You're like a sponge. You take it in and don't let anything out. You're the first person they see in the morning, so if they're having a good day or a bad day, you know right away."

Nancy Grace, 51, was born and raised in Ruskin. She's lived in the area all her life, working at post offices in Riverview, Sun City, and now covering for another postmaster in Gibsonton, on a temporary basis.

The only time she lived away was when she worked at a boardwalk carnival for a year in Atlantic City. She was in her 20s.

Grace still remembers the post office there: "When we walked in there, everything was behind bars. You had a little slip where you'd put the mail through. It was like going to a bank."

She says she prefers rural post offices like her own, places where everyone knows each other, where people stop in every morning for a stamp or just to say hello.

Her mother, Beatrice, was a rural mail carrier, but Nancy Grace never imagined working for the post office when she was little. Instead, she dreamed of being a mother.

At 25, Grace was a mother - but a single one. Beatrice Grace talked her into taking the civil service test to get a job at the post office. She wanted security for her daughter and grandson.

So in 1979 Nancy Grace took a job as a postal clerk in Sun City. "It was a small office," she remembered. "A lot of people I'd known all my life came in there. . . . They were all so happy when I started working there. They'd come and say, "Hi.' It was such a small-town atmosphere."

She added, "Maybe that's why I love my job so much."

As a clerk, she said, she learned everything there was to know about running a post office. She learned to make change, measure postage, deal with people. The hardest part of the job, she says, comes from the inadvertent glimpses she gets into other people's troubles.

Like when a couple who share a post office box break up, and she has to explain that the person whose name is on the box gets to keep the mail.

Or when people are mailing checks on the first of the month, scraping by.

Or when she has to help someone who's lost something precious in the post.

That's why she says you need compassion to be postmaster.

"You have to have compassion for the person who comes in and says, "I've mailed this package to my granddaughter, and it's not there.' And you're asking them questions: Is it insured? And they say no. You have to understand just how important it is."

Sometimes, she says, she'll make the call to the destination post office herself. "You have the employees actually look, and sometimes the package really is sitting there on the shelf," she said.

That's the kind of attention to detail that got her named Postmaster of the Year.

The announcement, which came at a postmasters' banquet earlier this year, was a thrill.

But Grace says it wasn't as big a rush as when she was first named postmaster, in 1989.

She remembers taking the phone call at home. "I just sat there for a moment, because I was in shock," she said.

The first thing she did, she said, was to call her mother. And her grandmother, Georgia.

"She was so proud of me," Grace said.

AGE: 51

FAMILY: Son, Michael Self, 29, daughter-in-law Aimee, and granddaughter Lena, 7.

IN HER SPARE TIME: She reads, works out, and spends time with friends and family.

MOST IMPORTANT THING LEARNED FROM WORKING AT THE POST OFFICE: "Listen."

WHAT SHE WANTS CUSTOMERS TO KNOW: Wrap your packages carefully. Make sure they can survive the journey.

FAVORITE TYPE OF MAIL: Express mail. "It's the most important thing we have to deliver. It's the fastest, and it's insured for $100. Everything's guaranteed."

FAVORITE POST OFFICE ACTIVITY: Shipping boxes of citrus at Christmas.

[Last modified September 15, 2005, 11:02:11]