Leaving his stamp on local history

GENESEO, NY — Folks in the Village of Geneseo are going the miss the familiar figure of mail carrier Stanley Johnson when he retires at the end of the year after close to four decades on the same route.

Stan was raised in Geneseo on Route 20A “two houses past the golf course.”

Stan graduated from Geneseo Central in 1970, while his brother Roger was serving in Vietnam. Stan joined the National Guard, whose activity was then confined to weekend training and occasional flood duty.

Stan’s employment by the post office was fortuitous: A matter of being in the right place at the right time. Shortly after graduation, with brother Roger then employed at the post office, Stan stopped in to buy some stamps and chided Tom Mix for hiring someone else while he himself was “now out of school looking for a job.”

That very day Postmaster Joe Ricotta had been given permission to hire a new part-time ‘postal assistant’ for 20 hours a week. Stan was offered the job and accepted “until I decide what I want to do in life.”

When one of the village carriers quit his job to join the military in 1972, Stan “cleaned up the route and got everything off the floor,” resulting in the postmaster offering Stan the full-time position.

“I’ve been on the same route ever since,” Stan reports…

…long enough for Stan to see some of his postal customers’ kids grow up and start families of their own, and long enough to have worked under 13 Geneseo postmasters.

The route has always included Main Street and Wadsworth Street, and now includes the north side of the village and the Jacqueline Way apartments. In the last two years it has also included the Geneseo Heights apartments.

In the old days, when the route included all of Court Street, Stan would be looking for a ride back up the hill at the conclusion of his morning shift, before starting up North Street in the afternoon.

The original route was all walking, with pickups set out in the old green relay boxes. In 1978 Stan was issued a vehicle which allowed him to take the entire day’s mail on board.

Carriers are expected to deliver at least eighteen letters a minute and eight magazines a minute — and any parcel up to 70 pounds in weight. The route has about 500 mailbox customers.

Stan briefly disappeared from his route 18 months ago when a medical checkup revealed he was in need of heart surgery. Five bypasses and 14 weeks later he was back on the job like nothing had happened.

But right after the surgery it took Stan a five full minutes to walk the length of his own driveway and back to his house. Prior to returning to the route, Stan got himself back in shape by walking five-to-ten miles a day.

How has Stan’s job been impacted by electronic technology?

“We’ve felt it quit a bit,” he admits. “Now everybody emails. It’s instant, but the personal touch in hand-writing a card to someone is gone.”

“The post office is about the personal touch. That touch is what we deliver.”

With email and bill paying online, Stan sees advertising becoming the principal commodity delivered by the post office in future years.

Stan notes that the post office will often deliver your incorrectly addressed Christmas card without a return.

“As long as we know where somebody is, we’re going to get their letter to them. That is lost when we have electronic communication,” he suggests.

Stan and his wife Barb plan to stay right in Geneseo, where they have four rental properties to manage. Barb plans to teach another four years at York Central School. They may acquire a retirement property in the complex in Florida managed by Stan’s union, where Stan and Barb can stay when visiting their daughter, but they have no plans to permanently leave their longtime home.

See complete story in our Dec. 17 print edition.