Keeping islands alive

A simple post office can mean survival of a tiny community

By Helen O'Neill, Associated Press writer

Chugging through the waves in his 35-foot boat Sparrow, Maine lobsterman Paul Joy casts a wistful glance at the candy-striped buoys in his wake.

At the height of the lobster season, he'd sooner be hauling traps than pulling into the shelter of a distant island cove where a handful of locals greet him like a savior.

But for the next few hours, Joy leaves lobstering behind. His island ministry, too. For this strapping fisherman-pastor -- a "fisher of men," as he says -- has a more immediate mission: to deliver the U.S. mail.

And for the 50 or so people who live year-round on Frenchboro, Long Island, a craggy Atlantic outpost eight miles from the mainland, that is perhaps the highest calling of all.

Certainly, it seems the most threatened.

No one knows how many post offices once existed on the hundreds of tiny islands scattered, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, through the Gulf of Maine. But folks here are sure of one thing. The post office is as endangered as the one-room schoolhouse and the island general store, as endangered as island life itself. And, say islanders, once the post office goes, it doesn't matter how well the lobsters are crawling or how much fancy fishing equipment can be bought with state grants. Their lifeline goes as well.

Once there were 300 Maine islands with year-round residents. Today there are 14. In the past three years two island post offices closed. Two more won bitter fights to stay open.

Which is why the battle signs are everywhere, flapping on spray-soaked ferry notice boards, blazing from the pages of the island newspapers, mailed as reminders to summer residents: "Save an Island Post Office -- Buy Stamps by Mail."

The strategy is simple. If the thousands of "summer people" who flock to the coast from New York and Nebraska and California can be persuaded to buy stamps from the islands year-round, they might generate enough revenue to halt the "postal demolition squad." By doing their mail -- by mail -- from Frenchboro and Little Cranberry and Monhegan -- they can help save the way of life of their summer neighbors.

"It doesn't cost any more than a regular post office, and you don't have to stand in line," says Sue Giamo, who kept the Frenchboro service alive for a year by selling stamps from the island firehouse. "You fill out a form, and you might help save an island."

The campaign, launched by the Rockland-based Island Institute several years ago, has won the stunned respect of the postal service and the gratitude of islanders. And it has turned one island post office into a national phenomenon. The Islesford post office on Little Cranberry, tucked into a cubbyhole inside the general store, now generates $58,000 a year in mail-order stamps. It's the No. 1 stamps-by-mail outlet in Maine.

"We just have a regular everyday post office that brings people together to collect their mail and gather the news of the day," says postmistress Joy Sprague, eyes twinkling because she knows her homespun gold mine is so much more.

Little Cranberry is 1½ miles long, two-thirds of a mile wide and shaped like a pork chop. A half-hour ferry ride from Northeast Harbor, it has a population of about 75 year-round that swells to 300 in summer.

It's a gentle place of sandy roads and pebbled beaches, incessant gulls and an occasional osprey. And it's a vibrant place of artists and writers and fishermen, where everyone takes part in island rituals like the annual Wits and Nitwits variety show, like wandering down to the dock to greet the morning mail boat.

The Sea Queen pulls into Hadlock Cove at about 10:30 a.m., roof piled high with mountain bikes and lumber, crates of lettuce, sacks of onions, bags of flour. In the cabin, wedged between the piano tuner and the gardener, a golden retriever lounges on orange and brown canvas sacks stamped "Property of the U.S. Postal Service."

The post office is a short walk from the dock, over a hill, through a field of wildflowers, up the steps of the red-shingled general store, where teddy bears picnic in the window.

Inside, the radio crackles with news from the lobster boats. The smell of eggplant pizza lingers over the lunch counter. The islanders drift in.

They come to check on ferry schedules and thunderstorms, to buy bread and milk, to swap blueberry recipes and catch up on news from the mainland. They come to collect letters and bills, to buy stamps and money orders (there is no bank on the island), to mail out local crafts.

And, with great anticipation, they come to see if anyone has been inducted into the cream puff hall of fame.

Little Cranberry may be the only post office in the world where the culinary skills of the postmistress influence sales. For every 25th Express Mail customer, Ms. Sprague bakes a batch of her chocolate-smothered delicacies and pins the recipient's photograph into the "hall of fame" above her counter.

It's a gesture as heartfelt as the handwritten newsletter she sends to all her customers, describing sunsets on Gilley beach; clamming with her daughter, Jasmine; the antics of the barnyard ducks, George and Sally.

"Greetings from the Islesford post office and Little Cranberry Island," the monthly letters begin. They end with a reminder to buy more stamps by mail.

Her folksy touch has endeared her to fans around the world and secured lucrative stamp contracts from customers in Iceland and Istanbul, Mexico and Turkey. These days, she thinks nothing of getting an order for $1,000 worth of stamps from a dentist's office in New Hampshire, a graphic design company in New York City, NASA in Houston.

"Joy is an example of what one person can do with an organization that, in most places, people think of as an anonymous entity," says summer resident Henry Isaacs, a four-time member of the cream puff hall of fame.

It's not always easy selling good will with stamps. The ferry captains tip off Ms. Sprague when the postal inspectors are coming, so she can remove some of the handmade knickknacks that adorn her cubbyhole. The rules say only postal material is permitted.

Ms. Sprague won't talk about it, but that doesn't stop her customers. Another little triumph, they gloat. Another little victory in The Battle of The Post Office.

"It's a fight to get people to understand the importance of the post office to an island's identity," says Marge Kilkelly of the Island Institute. "And it's a battle that affects every island."

None is more battle-scarred than Casco Bay's Cliff Island.

An isolated stretch of rocky ledge and pine, eight miles from the mainland, Cliff has struggled more than most to stay alive. In 1995, with only 57 year-round residents and five students in the one-room school, it advertised around the country for families with children. The Cusacks, from Branford, Conn., took up the cause.

"We came to the island, hoping to help a community by living in it," says Jeffrey Cusack, a banker who takes the daily ferry to his job in Portland. "All of a sudden we were fighting for a piece of what sustains island life."

The fight started, as it so often does, with a planned retirement. This time it was 71-year-old Eleanor Cushing, who ran the post office from her home. The postal service decided to close the post office and contract out the service. Cushing decided to put her retirement on hold.

From an economical perspective, the argument was clear. It cost $40,000 a year in salaries and rent. Cushing only generated about $12,000. Contracting a limited service to a non-postal employe would be far cheaper.

But a contract can be canceled on a whim, leaving islanders with no service at all. And the alternative -- dockside delivery boxes -- was considered too limited.

"How were we supposed to mail a package?" Cusack says. "It's not like we could hop in a car and drive to the post office in the next town." Cusack turned to the National Association of Postmasters of the United States, who explained the rules concerning closings, the laws governing appeals. Islanders turned to summer residents, urging them to write to the postal service and the politicians. They did far more. Over a couple of months, they raised $17,000 for a new post office, hammered together by locals in the basement of the community hall.

Impressed, the postal service dropped its plans and appointed a new postmistress. Anna Dyer opened her bright new post office on May 16. Among her first orders of business: to sign up summer customers for stamps by mail. She already has a promise of an order worth a few hundred dollars from Damascus, Syria.

Postal officials insist they are not in the business of closing post offices just because they don't make money. But revenues clearly have a bearing. Since 1970, an average of 145 post offices have been closed annually, leaving a total of 28,000.

"We know we have a social responsibility," says Beecher Doody, who reviews proposed closings in Maine. "But people have to understand, we can't go to Congress for money. We have to rely on the sale of our products."

A postmaster himself, Doody has met with islanders on Cliff and Frenchboro. He understands their fears. But he's skeptical about the newfound appeal of the stamps-by-mail program, which, he points out, has been around for years. Sometimes, he says, "closings are initiated because no one wants the job."

That was the case in Frenchboro, where the longtime postmistress retired a year ago. The postal service tried to contract the work. But folks on Frenchboro fish for a living. No one had time to sell stamps.

The alternatives were mailboxes on the pier, or in Bass Harbor on the mainland, which would have meant a 45-minute ferry ride and an overnight stay. The ferry runs one way, three days a week.

"The island would have gone down the tubes," says Sue Giamo, who runs a silk-screening mail-order business from Frenchboro. Giamo agreed to a $10-an-hour contract on a temporary basis, selling stamps from the fire department for two hours a day. She says she couldn't have done it longer than a year. She didn't have to.

In March, the postal service announced a national moratorium on postal closings, and the Frenchboro crisis passed. Today, a newly appointed postmistress runs the post office from her home.

The battle may be over, but it left its mark, dredging up memories of battles past -- for electricity and ferry service, for foster children to keep the school open, for settlers to fill empty houses.

"It takes a lot to live here," says David Lunt, whose family settled in the 1820s and still pretty much runs the island. "And it takes a lot to bring the mail."

Two ferry rides and a trip overland, to be precise. Which is why Paul Joy is considered a savior. Four days a week, Joy picks up Frenchboro's mail on neighboring Swan's Island, his home. He chucks it into his lobster boat and ferries it to Frenchboro, where he lugs it up a hill to the post office. There, he collects outgoing mail, ships it back to Swan's, and puts it on the ferry to the mainland.

Joy gets $50 round-trip for a job no one else wants. Too much money in traps. Not that it bothers the 50-year-old Church of God minister.

"I'm a fisher of men, first," Joy says, stopping on his mail route to haul in a couple of traps and yank out the lobsters inside. "And the mail delivery, it sort of falls into the same category ... providing a service to people who really need it."

Of course, if he really wanted to haul great catches of men, Joy could go and fish in the cities.

Sure, he says with a smile, deftly measuring the lobsters with a ruler and flinging the smaller ones back. "But someone has to fish out here."

And someone has to deliver the mail.

Photos by the Associated Press
Top: Lobsterman Paul Joy arrives with the mail at Frenchboro, a village on Long Island in the Gulf of Maine, which maintains a year-round population of 50. Middle: Islelford postmistress Joy Sprague greets a customer at her tiny post office on Little Cranberry Island. She has maintained her post office by generating income from the mail-order sale of stamps. Bottom: Isleford Postmistress Joy Sprague hands mail bags to Tony Davis for delivery to the mainland. Many residents of Maine's tiny islands believe that keeping their post offices will help keep their tiny communities alive.