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Post Office Celebrates 119 Years
By S. Mary Bodde

S. Ann Elizabeth Von Hagel (left), one of the postal clerks at the Mount St. Joseph Post Office, sells a sheet of stamps to S. Mary Bodde. The post office celebrated its 119th birthday last week. To read more about the services offered by the post office, as well as its history, click here.

“It’s wonderful seeing everybody and it’s so nice to offer this service [receiving and sending mail],” S. Ann Elizabeth Von Hagel, a 10-year clerk at the Mount St. Joseph Post Office, said as she welcomed Sisters and lay personnel to the post office’s 119 th birthday celebration.

S. Timothy Ann Schroeder, a nine-year clerk, echoed, “It’s wonderful to be able to help everyone.”

The Mount St. Joseph Post Office is open for service Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. But Sisters Ann Elizabeth and Timothy Ann begin their work day at 6:30 a.m. to receive incoming mail delivered by Fred Brown, a mail carrier from the Main Post Office on Dalton Street in Cincinnati; at 3:30 p.m. Dennis Hughes picks up the Mount mail for the same terminal. Only once did the 6:30 a.m. delivery arrive at 5 p.m. - during a bad snowstorm a few years ago.

“We use the same old hospital gurney,” S. Ann Elizabeth said, “to move the mail to and from our Marian Hall entrance; it’s really old!” Also inside the post office is an old scale that has been replaced at the customer desk with a computerized scale.

The Mount Post Office is a clearing house for inter-campus mail – Motherhouse, Mother Margaret Hall, Bayley Village, the College of Mount St. Joseph and the neighborhood. The Sisters of Charity-owned meter machine allows the Sister clerks to meter mail for the offices and give each an account every month.

Packing up the mail ‘to go’ requires a lot of sorting: priority packages, standard parcel post, U.S. and foreign letters, express overnight, registered mail. Each category goes in a separate bag.

“We offer all the services of a regular post office, but we cannot accept credit cards or international money orders,” S. Timothy Ann said.

As a fourth-class post office, Sisters Ann Elizabeth and Timothy Ann explained the Sisters of Charity contract as a postal unit under the North Bend Post Office. The U.S. government pays rent for the three rooms used for the post office’s services, and the Sister clerks get a ‘non-negotiable’ check for what they would earn if they were lay employees, but they are not paid directly by the government.

The current Sister postal clerks follow eight Sisters of Charity postmasters beginning Nov. 9, 1891, with Mother Mary Blanche (who had to register with her legal name, Mary Davis). She was followed by Sisters Mary Agnes McCann, Mary Ursula (as Julia Shea), Alice Marie O’Meara, Marie Antoine Humpert, Mary Annice Cushman, Marie Mateo Trenkle and Grace Angela Hillebrand.

“During S. Grace Angela’s extended illness,” S. Ann Elizabeth recalled, “she suggested to the Sisters of Charity Council that since no Sisters were interested in becoming postmasters, the position should be advertised for postal clerks.”

Beginning in 1948 Sisters (and three lay women) became postal clerks: S. Mary Concepta Kraus, Marie Antoine Humpert, Mary Kenneth Burke, Grace Hillebrand, Marietta Blakeley and David Marie Brinkmoeller. Mrs. Jackie Frazier served two years (1967-’69); Mrs. Connie Fischer and Regina Boerst as PTF clerks, 1981-’86 and 1986-’91 respectively. The late S. Dorothy Marie Kremer and S. William Loretta Saupe followed as Community postal workers for the next 10 years.

The Mount Post Office has moved four times since its original location on the second floor of Marian Hall. Since 1988, it has been located in Rooms 101, 103 and 104 on the first floor of Marian.

Both Sisters Ann Elizabeth and Timothy Ann feel blessed to be called to what has become for them and their customers a ministry of hospitality.

 

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