A Loss Of Identity

To the Editor:

The closing of the small Hawleyville Post Office (06440) is not just about a post office, but about losing a community and another part of “Small Town America.” Operations will be moving to the Newtown facility on February 14.

The small community of Hawleyville has had a post office since the mid-1800s. Hawleyville, as it is now, basically consists of a dry cleaner, railroad lumber yard, small convenience store, a fire department, and the local post office.

They say we will have the same zip code (06440), but when you don’t have a post office, you don’t have identity. We deserve our post office like any other community. Actions like this are like pounding a nail in the coffin in preparation for the death of our small community. The post office is our community. If you don’t understand the importance of a post office in a small community, then you’ve never lived there.

Rural post offices are the backbone of America and are an integral part of the social, political, and economic fabric of small towns. If a small post office disappears, so does the community. Small post offices like Hawleyville serve as a gathering point and act as a source of information that goes far beyond postal issues. The post office is vital to the well-being and survival of any small community in identity, serves as a meeting place as well as providing a local presence for the national government.

The Postal Service Universal Service Obligation and Rural Post Offices (USO) states “To render postal services to all communities and provide a maximum degree of effective postal services to small towns.” 

Some believe that operating a rural post office is very expensive and closing them would save considerable money, yet the President’s Commission on the Postal Service found this is not true as the cost of operating the smallest 10,000 post offices is less than one percent of the postal service’s annual budget. It is also my understanding, the Hawleyville Post Office actually makes a profit.

By consolidating the 150-year-old Hawleyville Post Office with Newtown, we are losing our identity as well as way of life. There is a new website, www.savehawleyvillepo.com, that will give you an idea how the local citizens feel on this matter. Please visit this site and offer your support. 

We are losing what America stands for a little at a time.

James Mable

PO Box 116, Hawleyville                                           January 27, 2009