Letter Carriers

The Maryland Food Bank hopes to collect 10 percent more food than last year during tomorrow's fifth annual National Letter Carrier Food Drive.Residents in Baltimore City and Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Harford and Howard counties are asked to leave canned and other nonperishable food items at their mailboxes for pickup by letter carriers.The food, which can be left at post offices, will be distributed in the summer to the needy in areas where collected. The drive raised 203,631 pounds of food last year and about 170,000 pounds in 1995.

Nearly one in six Marylanders did not have enough money to buy food their family needed at times during 2012, according to a report released Thursday by the Food Research and Action Center. Of those surveyed, 15.9 percent in the Baltimore-Towson area said they did not have cash to get enough food. That's compared to 16.2 percent of respondents in the state. Nationally, the rate was 18.2 percent. Mississippi had the highest food hardship rate of 24.6 percent; North Dakota had the lowest at 10.9 percent.

County residents can help restock the shelves at the Harford Food Bank by leaving nonperishable food near their mailboxes Saturday for pickup.Letter carriers will collect food donations from residents along their route as part of a one-day effort by the National Association of Letter Carriers to help reduce hunger nationwide."

Wanda Feagen pulled on her blue United States Postal Service coat and a pair of thick black gloves shortly after 10 a.m. Saturday, blinking against a hard wind and waiting for her mail delivery truck to fill up on gas. "Hoo hoo!" she said of the cold weather. Feagen had just set out from the Gwynn Oak post office after cataloging mail since the start of her day at 7:30 a.m., and was on her way to the rolling residential hills nearby to begin her regular weekend delivery route.

The sixth one-day National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive for the needy will be held in Baltimore and the five surrounding counties May 9.Donors are asked to leave nonperishable items at their mailboxes to be collected or take them to their local post office. Items sought include canned vegetables, fuits and meats, dry cereal, pasta and peanut butter. The Maryland Food Bank and similar agencies will distribute the food to soup kitchens and shelters.Pub Date: 4/29/98

Donald Gregory McDeshen, a letter carrier and former postal union officer who was a familiar presence to his customers in the Hampton Plaza building in Towson for nearly 20 years, died of pneumonia Aug. 13 at St. Agnes HealthCare. He was 53. The Abingdon resident was born in Tacoma, Wash., and moved to Middle River as a child. After graduation from Kenwood High School in 1967, he enlisted in the Navy. He joined the U.S. Postal Service after his 1969 discharge from the service, and spent most of his career - except for a nine-year hiatus to serve as vice president of the National Association of Letter Carriers - delivering mail and packages to occupants of the Hampton Plaza building at Joppa Road and Fairmount Avenue.

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow -- nor a full month of all three -- kept letter carriers in Maryland yesterday from the start of their annual food drive on behalf of the hungry.The weeklong campaign began with a news conference at the main branch of the post office.Organized by Larry V. Adam, founder of Harvest for the Hungry, the post office push has a goal of more than 1 million pounds of food, 50 percent more than last year.The carriers will do most of the heavy lifting, picking up the bags of canned goods set out by postal customers on their porches and by their mailboxes.

Carl J. Sefa and his 86 letter carriers are bracing today for Dundalk's annual weeklong outpouring of canned goods and pasta for Harvest for the Hungry."

First-class stamps cost 32 cents, postcards cost 20 -- but rescues are free, courtesy of the Halethorpe post office, where two letter carriers are being cited for saving lives."

Al Phillips points to his calf and shows you where a 75-pound yellow Lab took a chunk out of his leg and wouldn't give it back.The sunlight seems to illuminate the scar, which is still dark red and nasty-looking six months after a biting incident severe enough to land Phillips in an emergency care facility, woozy from painkillers with his leg still throbbing.Phillips, 45, has been a letter carrier for more than 14 years. He works out of the Parkville branch of the U.S. Post Office. And this week was Al Phillips' moment in the spotlight.

Wayne Allen Dorman, a longtime letter carrier and outdoorsman, died Monday of renal failure at the Anneslie home of his sister-in-law. He was 56. Born and raised in Joppa, Mr. Dorman was a 1971 graduate of Edgewood High School. After serving in the Air Force, he went to work in 1979 for the U.S. Postal Service as a letter carrier. Mr. Dorman worked out of the Parkville post office and at the time of his death was assigned to Oak Crest Village retirement community on Walther Boulevard.

LACEY, Wash. - Until late last month, Dean Peterson was a relatively anonymous 48-year-old mail carrier. Then he went to Boston and nervously introduced a resolution to include kilts as an official uniform option for male Postal Service carriers. And even though his pitch to the National Association of Letter Carriers convention failed, Peterson has gone worldwide. While Peterson and his wife, Joni, were in Boston, their two teenage sons back home were fielding phone calls. Peterson was all over the media and Internet in North America, Great Britain, India - pretty much anywhere that has some knowledge of that Gaelic tradition.

Leroy "Pat" Hauenstein, a retired letter carrier and longtime Towson resident, died of complications from dementia and diverticulitis May 27 at Baltimore Washington Medical Center. He was 95. Mr. Hauenstein was born in his parents' Smallwood Street rowhouse. He spent his early years growing up on Fulton Avenue before moving with his family to Hamilton in 1924. After graduating from Polytechnic Institute in 1931, he worked at a Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. grocery store. "During the Depression, he used to bring dented cans of food home for his family to eat and worked cleaning movie houses to make extra money," said his daughter, Donna L. Bradshaw of Severna Park.

Howard A. Wimbley, a retired postal letter carrier and former Essex resident, died Saturday of respiratory failure at a nursing home in Eureka, Mont. He was 86. Mr. Wimbley was born and raised in Baltimore. He was a 1935 graduate of St. Michael's parochial school. During World War II, he served in the Navy from 1942 to 1945, as a pay officer assigned to the Atlantic theater. Mr. Wimbley was a letter carrier in Essex from 1945 until his retirement in 1991. Mr. Wimbley, who moved to Eureka a decade ago, was an avid Orioles fan and HO-gauge model railroader.

Vincent L. Cardinale Sr., a retired letter carrier who survived the Dec. 7, 1941, attack at Pearl Harbor and was later active in Italian-American organizations, died Feb. 3 of lung disease at his Dundalk home. He was 82. Born and raised in Little Italy, he attended St. Michael parochial school and also delivered ice and milk. One day he told his mother he was going out to buy cigarettes. He lied about his age and enlisted in the Army at age 17. He was assigned to the Schofield Barracks at Honolulu.

William M. Dearing, a retired letter carrier and World War II veteran, died of cancer June 28 at Northwest Hospital Center. The West Baltimore resident was 81. Born and raised in Roanoke, Va., he moved to Baltimore in 1942. After serving in an Army transportation unit in France and Germany during World War II, he worked several odd jobs and then became a postal worker. A letter carrier in Northwest Baltimore, he retired about 20 years ago from the Wabash Avenue station. In his free time, Mr. Dearing enjoyed fishing and was a tenpins bowler at the old Colt Lanes in Woodlawn.

A recent spate of canine attacks has prompted the United States Postal Service to issue an ultimatum to 500 Armistead Gardens residents: Move your mailbox to the street, or your mail will not be delivered -- even if you don't own a dog.The new rule, announced March 19, may be the first regulation of its kind to be issued by the Postal Service in Baltimore, postal officials say.The department typically takes action against the owner of a troublesome pet...

Maryland postal workers overcame a slow start to collect more food than last year in their annual house-to-house drive, which ended yesterday.As of late Friday, food donations for the Harvest for the Hungry campaign reached 443,440 pounds, an increase from last year's collection of 398,000 pounds, said Larry Adam Jr., the Harford County investment broker who founded the food campaign.The drive, conducted by 3,000 letter carriers, was extended two weeks in a bid to boost donations.Only about 200,000 pounds had been collected when the drive was due to end in mid-March.

This is the last in a series of stories on the people who do the behind-the-scenes work of the holidays. The envelope was addressed to No. 2223, but after nearly 24 years on the route, Dudley Bradburn knew it didn't match the name on the Christmas card. He filed it where it belonged, with the mail for No. 2322 and a certain Michael Earley. Catching mis-addressed cards is one way he serves his customers. But not the only way this time of year. Take the time he hid a gift of golf clubs with a neighbor rather than deliver them when the intended recipient was home.

Winston H. Jones, a retired letter carrier who was the founder and pastor of a Woodlawn church, died of heart failure Tuesday at Northwest Hospital Center. He was 61 and lived in Owings Mills. Mr. Jones was born and raised in West Baltimore, and was a 1959 graduate of Carver Vocational-Technical High School. He earned an associate's degree in 1986 from Catonsville Community College. A letter carrier, Mr. Jones walked a regular route for 35 years in Arlington and later Pikesville until his retirement in 1997.