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No one knew victim was a postal worker©New York Times
© St. Petersburg Times, WASHINGTON -- In retrospect, the symptoms were inexorable. Joseph P. Curseen Jr., a 47-year-old postal worker at the Brentwood Road mail sorting center in Washington, told his wife last Tuesday that he thought he had a cold and food poisoning. A few days later, she recalled, he said he was aching all over. On Saturday evening, he fainted at 5 o'clock Mass at St. John the Evangelist church, but insisted on going to work that night. Nine hours later, his condition worsening, he went to the emergency room of Southern Maryland Hospital Center, complaining of what a hospital spokesman described as "flulike symptoms." Southern Maryland officials said no one at the hospital knew he was a postal worker, an important clue to the possibility of anthrax. Curseen was sent home a few hours later, early Sunday, with medications for nausea and dehydration, his wife said. It was not until Monday morning, after Curseen collapsed at home and returned to the hospital in an ambulance, that it was clear just how sick he was. His wife, Celeste, collected his parents, telling them their son was ill with pneumonia. When he saw his son at the hospital, attached to tubes and unable to speak, Joseph Curseen Sr., the father, said he began to cry. "It's tragic to see your son like that," he said Tuesday. It was then that a doctor came over and said his son was dying from anthrax. Curseen's case highlighted the slow horror of the unfolding anthrax crisis among postal workers. Before the deaths this week of Curseen and Thomas L. Morris Jr., another Brentwood postal employee, workers at the distribution center had been told they were safe. A second generation postal worker, Curseen was born and raised in Washington, in a comfortable home where his father told him tales of delivering mail and his mother was devoted to the local parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. After receiving a business degree from Marquette University, he joined the Postal Service in 1985. Curseen was the president of his homeowners association at Cambridge Estates, a comfortable suburban enclave in Clinton, Md. At the Brentwood mail center, Curseen worked the night shift, in charge of the mail coding machine for government mail. Morris, 53, was a distribution clerk and lived nearby in Suitland, Md., on the other side of the sprawling Andrews Air Force Base in Prince George's County. His wife, Mary, said her husband was a very private person. He joined the Postal Service in 1973. They worshiped at the Kendall Baptist Church in nearby Temple Hills and surrounded themselves with extended family members and friends. She deflected most questions about her husband, saying only what a wonderful husband, friend and provider he had been. "He was just a great guy," she said. "The reason I agreed to talk to the press was to proclaim my faith in Jesus. That's the only way I can make sense out of this whole thing." The FBI began investigating deaths within hours after the men's wives returned home. They arrived at the Curseen home that afternoon and knocked on the door. "Then they went to the back yard so the neighbors wouldn't see them, put on their space walker suits and went in the house to bag the clothes Joey wore to work," said his father. "They said they didn't want to scare the neighbors."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
