Handled with care

[Times photo: Cherie Diez] Chuck Donahue delivers mail in Mobel Americana Mobile Estates in St. Petersburg, where many residents greet him warmly by name, eager for the bounty he brings. Still, there’s a sense of caution, if not fear, as he delivers letters and packages amid the anthrax scare.

By LANE DeGREGORY
© St. Petersburg Times,
published December 6, 2001

As local letter carriers continue their rounds without missing a beat, the Postal Service launches an emotional ad campaign to reassure the public that nothing, including terrorism, will stop the mail.

ST. PETERSBURG -- Chuck Donahue stuffs a stack of letters into his canvas bag and slings it over his shoulder. He jumps out the right side of his Jeep, slides on polarized sunglasses and starts weaving his way around birdbaths and rain gutters, across the sun-baked sidewalks of Mobel Americana Mobile Estates.

Around every corner, someone is waiting. Here, they're always waiting. That, at least, hasn't changed.

"CHUCK! Oh, it's Chuck!" a white-haired woman calls from the screened porch of her mobile home. She's wearing a quilted yellow bathrobe, leaning on an aluminum walker with one wilted hand, waving with the other. "Hi, Chuck! Did you have a nice Thanksgiving, honey?"

[Courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service] The U.S. Postal Service’s new television commercial combines visuals of postal workers with a poignant message, including an updated version of the Postal Service motto: “And neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night . . . nor the winds of change, nor a nation challenged, will stay us from the swift completion of our appointed rounds. Ever.”

The letter carrier nods, bounding up the wooden ramp, grinning. "Oh, yes I did. Very nice. How about you?"

"Yes, yes. Very nice, thank you, honey. Very, very nice."

He hands her a Florida Power bill, two shoppers' circulars. She reaches out, taking them as if they were treasures from a beloved friend. So grateful. "Thank you, honey. Thank you. So good to see you, Chuck."

"Take care of yourself, okay?" Donahue calls over his shoulder, already heading to another house. "I'll be back tomorrow to check on you."

In this over-55 mobile home park, Donahue is a hero of sorts. He brings photos of folks' grandkids, carries packages of medicine in his bare hands, totes birthday presents and church newsletters and coupon books from Walgreens. For many of these retirees, he is their main means of communication with family and friends back in Canada, their lifeline for diabetes supplies, eyeglasses, Social Security checks.

Their only visitor during a long day.

"I'm a connection," Donahue says, hustling down the palm-lined streets. "I'm a constant. Something they can count on."

Donahue delivers mail to 700 homes a day, five days a week, a loyal soldier for the Postal Service and the American way.

Both have been threatened lately.

Now, with the help of Carly Simon and a catchy amendment to their creed, executives at the U.S. Postal Service are fighting back, 60 seconds at a time.

Donahue is 36, about 6 feet tall, with spiked blond hair. He's wearing navy socks, to match his shorts, and black sneakers with more than 100 miles on the soles. He lives in Tampa with his wife, Kim, and 5-year-old daughter, Ryann. He has been a letter carrier for 13 years.

[Times photo: Cherie Diez] “Lots of people handle those envelopes before they ever get to me,” says letter carrier Chuck Donahue, noting that he worries more about his colleagues in other cities, where anthrax has been found, and about the postal workers who empty the collection boxes. “They get to that stuff first.”

Until October, Donahue's biggest worries were dogs and skin cancer.

Now he wonders whether one of the packages he's carrying might be dusted with poison. Whether any of those envelopes might be deadly.

"We're all having to worry about things we never even thought about before, you know?" he says, handing a brown paper package to a man with a silver cane. "I try not to let it get to me. But, sure, you have to think about it."

During the past two months, two postal employees in Washington, D.C., died after handling envelopes tainted with anthrax. More than 20,000 other postal workers who might have been exposed were given antibiotics. In Florida, anthrax spores were found at six Palm Beach County postal facilities, but no Florida postal workers have tested positive.

Some mail handlers, though, have started wearing rubber gloves, face masks, long sleeves -- just in case. Some shower as soon as they get home, before they'll hug their kids.

Just as postal workers are nervous about the mail, the public is nervous about the Postal Service.

Homeowners are taping up mail slots so letters won't fall into their foyers. Moving mailboxes to the curb so packages won't have to touch their porches. Sending back -- unopened -- almost everything that doesn't have a return address. Sending e-mails instead of Christmas cards. Trying to avoid the mail.

"One guy I work with has this woman on his route who used to wait inside, by the door," Donahue says. "Now, she meets him at the street every day. With a pair of tongs! He hands her the mail. And she has her hands in rubber gloves, and she grabs her mail with tongs!

"Some people are more spooked and suspicious than others. I just try to make them feel at ease, let them know I'm not worried, that I'm being more alert to every piece of mail and checking it for them.

"That's about all I can do."

Executives at the Postal Service knew they had to do more.

Even before Sept. 11, their business was under siege: competition from e-mail, increasing debt, more than 2.5-billion holiday cards to deliver each winter.

Then there was anthrax.

"Crisis often presents an opportunity," says Larry Speakes, advertising manager for the Postal Service.

In mid October, after the initial anthrax alerts, Speakes called the seven advertising agencies that contract with the Postal Service, plus an eighth, Grey Worldwide.

"We need an advertising campaign that will bolster the spirit and pride of our 800,000 employees," Speakes said. "And we want something that will shore up the public's image of postal workers."

He gave the advertising executives one week.

The winning ad -- a single 60-second spot -- was created by Jonathan Mandel and Frank Krimmel of Grey Worldwide. During their seven years working together, these two New Yorkers have created television campaigns for Burger King, VISA and Pepsi.

They go for emotion, they say. Music. Movement. Meaning.

The Postal Service ad opens with the soft strains of a piano. Black-and-white stills of postal workers' happy faces sliding across the screen. No voices.

Just words. White words, illuminating the lower half of the darker images. Brightly lingering, slowly fading, changing across faces light and dark: "We are mothers and fathers." More faces. "And sons and daughters." Still, more faces. "Who every day go about our lives with duty, honor and pride."

Then comes the kicker. The creative team at the advertising agency actually rewrote the Postal Service's 212-year-old creed.

"And neither snow" (postman in ski cap trudging across the tundra), "nor rain" (beaming postwoman, unloading packages in a downpour), "nor heat, nor gloom of night . . . "

Finally, this: "NOR THE WINDS OF CHANGE, NOR A NATION CHALLENGED, will stay us from the swift completion of our appointed rounds. EVER."

The music builds. Slides morph into moving pictures. Carly Simon's rich alto voice flows behind the images.

"Let the river run. Let all the dreamers wake the nation. Come, the day has just begun."

Stamp sellers and Express Mail carriers and the guys who empty those blue corner mailboxes, all at sunrise. Everyone doing his or her job. More video pouring over more lyrics.

After 59 seconds, the song stops. An American flag ripples in the wind atop a towering post office. More white words.

"We've been here since September 26, 1789. We're still here. America can count on us."

The Postal Service "Pride" ad began airing Nov. 11, exactly two months after the World Trade Center bombings, exactly two weeks after its debut for the postal executives.

"The Carly Simon song just made it for most of us. It was exactly the sort of feeling we'd been looking for," Speakes says.

"And Carly was very kind to us. After the advertising agency told her what they wanted to use the music for, she called the postmaster general and donated the rights. She even rewrote a few of the lyrics and re-recorded it at her home studio in Martha's Vineyard."

The song was from the soundtrack to the movie Working Girl, which won an Academy Award. The original lyrics included, "Come, the New Jerusalem." But, given the circumstances, that might have seemed apocalyptic. So Simon changed the words: "The day has just begun" (letter carrier sorting mail at sunrise . . .).

The ad is airing on CBS, ABC, NBC, ESPN and ESPN2, during Jag, 20/20 and Good Morning America, on the Saturday Night Movie and the Today show, during TV timeouts at college and professional football games.

It will run through Jan. 6, maybe longer.

The Postal Service will spend about $112-million this year on advertising. Speakes would not reveal how much the new ad -- or the television time -- is costing. He called the spots "priceless."

For years now, the Postal Service has been losing money. On the morning of Sept. 11, its Board of Governors was going to announce plans to raise stamp prices by 3 cents. A month before anthrax, postal executives were projecting that the service would lose $1.65-billion in 2001.

Now Postmaster General John Potter says it will cost $3-billion to $7-billion to make the mail system safe. He asked Congress for a $5-billion bailout.

President Bush already gave the Postal Service $175-million from the $40-billion emergency fund. That should be enough, White House spokesmen say.

It's not, Potter says, because safety isn't the only problem.

People aren't using the mail as much since September. Volume has decreased by about 7 percent compared with the same time last year. That's the biggest drop since the Depression.

Postal executives estimate they've lost $634-million in revenue in the past three months.

Fear of anthrax even affected Dear Abby. Pentagon officials asked the column's syndicate to stop the traditional Operation Dear Abby, in which readers send holiday greetings to U.S. soldiers overseas. That's just one more thing cutting into the Postal Service's income.

"We operate under government regulations but have to compete with the private sector," Speakes says. "It makes it very difficult to work like a business."

More than half of the country's 38,000 post offices are not profitable. "But they're in small towns. They're a social center. They're a service," Speakes says. "People depend on us. That's what the commercial is all about."

Back at the mobile home park in St. Petersburg, Chuck Donahue says he hasn't seen the new ad. He says he doesn't feel like a hero. Although he doesn't mind the new mythology. . . .

He's just doing his job.

"When we first heard about the hoax letters, the ones they said were from St. Petersburg, my heart sunk. I guess all our hearts sunk," Donahue says, winding around a newly planted manger scene, digging into his deep shoulder bag. "All my relatives and friends called. My wife gave me this look, like, "You're not going to work there again, are you?' I just laughed.

"All any of us can do is do what we have to do and try not to worry about it. We all have jobs. The terrorists have given all of us a new perspective. But we can't let them stop us. The best we can do is keep on."

Donahue insists he doesn't worry much about himself. But he does think about his co-workers sometimes. The ones in Washington and Trenton, N.J., who have been exposed to anthrax. Who have a spouse and children like him. Who are still out there boxing the mail, like him.

"Lots of people handle those envelopes before they ever get to me," Donahue says, sorting a stack of Bed Bath & Beyond 50 percent-off coupons. "The other people I worry about are the folks who empty the collection boxes. They get to that stuff first."

During the past two months, Donahue and postal workers across the country have been going to emergency meetings almost every day. They talk about ways to deal with the threat of anthrax. They talk about using irradiation and scanning handwriting and checking return addresses. Supervisors give them pep talks, assuring them of their safety. Employees worry, ask questions, then go back to work.

"Nor the winds of change, nor a nation challenged, will stay us from the swift completion of our appointed rounds. Ever."

At 11:35, Donahue is still striding quickly, starting to sweat. He wraps the ripped sleeve of a blue T-shirt around his left arm. Protection for the mail against perspiration; protection for his arm against ink and hot paper.

"I'm about ready for some cool weather, aren't you?" he asks Doris Drury, who is waiting outside her front door.

"Oh, I don't know," she says, taking a stack of mail from his arms. "This is why we moved to Florida."

Mrs. Drury is 67. She sees Donahue almost every day. She doesn't feel differently about the mail now, she says. She still wants to see Donahue at her side door. Still feels safe opening envelopes.

"But if I saw something with a handwriting on it that I didn't recognize, or no return address, I'd probably toss it -- or give it back to Chuck," she says. He laughs, starts back down the steps. "Even if you don't worry about what's in your own mail, I guess you've got to worry about what other letters are out there, next to yours, and what's in them.

"But I really don't think about it that much," she says. "I'm still sending out my 50 Christmas cards this year. Still mailing all my packages."

"That's the best thing we all can do," Donahue calls from the sidewalk. "Got to keep the mail moving. Got to keep the faith."

-- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Information from the Washington Post was also used.

The U.S. Postal Service delivers mail to 134-million addresses. Each year, about 1-million new addresses are added to the routes.

There are 38,000 post offices across the country.

To deliver the mail, postal workers use a fleet of 202,000 vehicles and drive 1.1-billion miles annually.

The postal service employs 797,795 people -- including a quarter-million veterans -- making it the nation's second-largest employer, after Wal-Mart.

Each letter carrier delivers an average of 2,300 pieces of mail a day.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.