SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
I will be honest, sometimes I daydream about a different job, wondering what life would be like if I hadn't become a journalist and instead taught high school English or was a lawyer or, you know, professional baseball player. Well, Vermont Public producer Burgess Brown daydreams about that, too.
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BURGESS BROWN, BYLINE: I'm very happy to be a journalist. But I have to tell you that I sometimes think about another path, a fantasy career of sorts.
DETROW: His alternative life career path...
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BROWN: It's my country mailman dream. In it, I drive a beat up Forester full of mail in a small town somewhere. I know my neighbors. I know their dogs. I watched their kids grow up. How romantic.
DETROW: ...A mailman. The next best thing to being a mailman, in Burgess' case, was reporting on them. Brave Little State is a podcast that answers listener questions about Vermont. In a recent episode, he took on a question about the state of the United States Postal Service and found it is not quite as romantic as he imagined.
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BROWN: It's a frigid day in January 2024, and people in Montpelier are pissed.
BEN DOYLE: A hundred and eighty-two days - that's how long Montpelier has been without a post office.
BROWN: A couple hundred concerned Montpelierites (ph) are gathered in front of the federal building downtown. It used to house the city's post office until it flooded in the summer of 2023. Six months later, it's still sitting there empty.
DOYLE: In the days after the July flood, the residents and friends of Montpelier showed up.
BROWN: Ben Doyle is standing at a microphone on the slushy sidewalk, flanked by members of Vermont's congressional delegation. Ben chairs the Montpelier Commission for Recovery and Resilience, created to respond to the devastating July flood.
DOYLE: Teenagers mucked out basements. Neighbors checked on neighbors. The delegation showed up. The governor showed up. Philanthropy showed up. You showed up. But 182 days later, you know who hasn't shown up? - United States Postal Service leadership.
BROWN: Those 182 days were a confusing and often frustrating time for Montpelier residents. For a while, the makeshift postal presence in town consisted of two or three delivery trucks that served as ad hoc P.O. boxes, surrounded by stacks of plastic crates overflowing with mail and packages. They didn't sell stamps and only accepted prepaid mail, so residents had to drive to neighboring towns for that. There was no electricity and no AC in the summer and then, as temperatures dropped, no heat. At one point, postal workers were burning open fires in a metal tub to keep warm while they handed out mail.
Concerned citizens and the congressional delegation wrote letters to management, demanding that Postmaster General DeJoy provide a timeline for a new permanent post office location. But nothing - residents' patience was wearing thin, like local business owner Kate Whelley McCabe.
KATE WHELLEY MCCABE: We are not asking for a miracle here. What we're asking for is for our federal government to do the most basic of things, and that is to give us a working post office right here in town.
BROWN: Johanna Nichols said that the trek to neighboring Barre to use postal services there was hurting Montpelier seniors.
JOHANNA NICHOLS: Have you tried the entrance to the Barre post office? It's pretty tricky.
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BROWN: The pressure campaign continued through the winter. And in April of last year, the Postal Service announced that they'd signed a lease on a downtown property. They promised a fully functional post office before the start of the summer. But summer came, and the summer went, and then the autumn and still no post office. In October, the American Postal Workers Union rallied on the state House lawn, and Ben Doyle showed up with some updated figures.
DOYLE: Four-hundred and forty-nine days, we're waiting, and we're not going to take it any longer.
BROWN: One of the most consistent criticisms I heard during this time was that Montpelier residents didn't really know where to go to get their mail or what the plan was for the future. They were frustrated by the lack of communication from Postal Service management.
DOYLE: Like, yeah, we can write them, or we can call them, and they're not going to get back to us, or they don't really care what we think, or we're howling to the wind.
BROWN: Ben, townspeople, our congressional delegation, spent 15 months howling into the wind. And then in the midst of my reporting for this story, 460 days after the flood and with little fanfare, it finally happened.
MICHAEL HAKEY: You've got the scissors. As the postmaster, you can be cutting the ribbon.
BROWN: It's October 12, 2024, in downtown Montpelier, and there's a grand opening happening.
HAKEY: First and foremost, welcome, everyone, to the Montpelier Post Office. This is certainly an exciting day in Montpelier Post Office history. And we're so very thankful to so many of you who have worked tirelessly to get this office back open.
BROWN: Michael Hakey, a postal operations manager, is presiding over this celebration. Press people appear to outnumber townspeople, and there are only four press people.
HAKEY: We'll now cut the ribbon and - which will signify the official grand opening of the Montpelier Post Office. Postmaster Doug Powell will cut the ribbon.
DOUG POWELL: We're officially open.
HAKEY: Excellent. Congratulations, or thank you.
BROWN: Did you catch that? Congratulations, or thank you. That sounds about right.
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BROWN: Congratulations, you got your post office back, or thank you for your patience? It's hard to know what to make of this day when it took so long to arrive. And then when it finally did, it kind of arrived with a bit of a whimper. After the ribbon cutting, I watched locals peer into the windows and then kind of timidly walk in to see if, this time, their post office really was open. And whatever their gripes with the postal service, they were glad to see a familiar face behind the counter...
WENDY GILLANDER: It was great to see you, Ned. All right, I'll see you soon.
BROWN: ...Wendy Gillander, a post office clerk in Montpelier.
GILLANDER: So it's been great.
BROWN: Yeah.
GILLANDER: I'm really happy to be back and seeing our regular customers again on a more regular basis, I guess I would say.
BROWN: Wendy spent the last 460 days in snow, in rain, in heat, making sure that Montpelier residents got their mail. Wendy knows her neighbors, and she knows their kids, and she knows their dogs, and they all know her, too.
ALICE ANGNEY: Yay.
GILLANDER: Yay is right.
ANGNEY: Thank you so much. I'm glad you have a home.
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DETROW: That was Burgess Brown on Vermont Public's Brave Little State podcast.
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