The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) recently announced that it will conduct a study of approximately 3,700 post offices around the nation, mostly in rural areas, to determine customer needs.
The study comes as part of an effort to introduce a retail-replacement option for affected communities around the nation.
One of those communities is Cambridgeport, a village near the Grafton town line that is part of the town of Rockingham.
USPS spokesman Tom Rizzo, based in Portland, Maine, said it's important for people to understand that there are no firm plans to close the Cambridgeport Post Office.
But Village residents and owners of the D&R General Store on Route 121, where the Cambridgeport Post Office is located, are concerned that the study could lead to a change in lifestyle that they do not want to see happen. Some have started a petition and called the office of Gov. Peter Shumlin in reaction to the news.
In a June 26 press release, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe wrote, “Today, more than 35 percent of the Postal Service's retail revenue comes from expanded access locations such as grocery stores, drug stores, office supply stores, retail chains, self-service kiosks, ATMs and usps.com, open 24/7. Our customers' habits have made it clear that they no longer require a physical post office to conduct most of their postal business.”
The current proprietor of the D&R General Store, Vickie Barrett, would disagree with Donahoe's assessment.
She said that the store and post office combination make it “convenient [for people who live nearby] to come to the store to have coffee, and keep in touch with their neighbors.”
She described several news items passed among patrons of the post office and store that were “important to people here” dealing with neighbors' health.
“It's a community center is what it is,” Barrett said.
The former proprietors, Dan and Robin Wells, said the 70-box post office “has always played an important role in the community.”
There has been a post office in Cambridgeport since 1834, when the first postmaster, George Willard, opened for business. The village used to be a busy place, with three woolen mills and a hotel, as well as a general store and post office.
A massive fire in 1930 wiped out three houses, three barns, and a previous store and post office, never to be rebuilt.
“The post office and store were the only amenity that we had left,” Barrett said.
Robin Wells used to be the postmistress. She and her husband bought the store from her aunt, Isabelle “Belle” Bell, in 1980 when she retired.
Between them, Bell, now 91, and Wells succeeded in running the post office and store at the D&R location for more than 60 years.
As the mill culture died away, and the village lost other sources of commerce, the village store became increasingly important. When Bell bought the store and took over the post office in the 1950s, it had just 10 post office boxes.
Still, many people carry on with the same routines: they come in to check their mail in the morning, grab a cup of coffee, and catch up on the news.
Bell recalled when the post office was small enough that she could also work behind the counter for the store.
“I had kids coming in to pick up their mail for their moms up the hill,” she said. “I knew who they were so I'd give it to them. Then they went over to the store and asked to buy a pack of cigarettes.”
She said she had to send the little boy home to get a note from mom “that he was buying them for her.” She said when he came back and gave her the note, she gave him a piece of “penny candy” and “I made a friend forever after,” Bell said.
“Right up until I retired, I'd have boys come into the store who remembered me giving them penny candy.”
Today, Barrett says the post office and store are the first place people stop in the morning, and the last place they stop at night.
If the post office closes, people will have to go someplace else, such as Grafton, Chester or Saxtons River, and they would lose one reason to stop at the store.
“As it stands, we already sell stamps from the counter. We buy them from the postmistress and have them available for people to buy if the window is closed,” Barrett said.
Alice White, who covers the store in the early mornings and weekends, said she sees the same people every day coming in to check their mail starting when she opens at 6 a.m.
“If the post office weren't here, a lot of those people wouldn't stop,” she said.
One of those people, Ron Carey, drives from his home in Grafton daily to drop off his mail.
“I buy my stamps here and do all my business here. I like the atmosphere [at D&R] with true Vermont humor,” he said, chuckling. “Handy parking, too.”
Thomas Taylor, who lives in Athens and comes to the store every morning to pick up his mail and grab a cup of coffee, agreed.
White displayed the petition with 180 signatures of people who want to save the village post office. “That's more than double the amount of people with boxes here. They must do some of kind business [with the post office] or they wouldn't have signed,” she said.
White said she even called Shumlin, and was surprised when he phoned her back.
“He said he understood our concerns,” she said. “He was quite nice.”
Purely business
Rizzo, the post office spokesman, underscored that the study will look at the feasibility of keeping a location open - purely a business consideration.
“The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations,” Rizzo said.
Unfortunately, he said, the USPS lost $8 billion this year. Rising energy costs, more people using the Internet, and increased health care and retirement expenses are among the reasons why the independent U.S. government agency is losing so much money.
One idea to save money, said Rizzo, is to “solicit bids from local retailers for them to take over the role of village post office,” and perform these functions.
People in Cambridgeport would have to go to Saxtons River, Grafton, or Chester for larger transactions such as sending certified mail or boxes that need to be weighed.
But Rizzo notes that by far the most popular service the USPS provides is flat-rate parcel boxes and sale of stamps, and he envisions the general store still providing those services.
“As long as we don't lose the post office altogether,” White said.