Chapter 2 Fired!

Chapter 2        

Fired!

Most people think that you would have to be pretty incompetent to be fired from the Postal Service. In John McNulty’s case, the opposite was true. He worked hard- too hard, according to the union. And he was smart- too smart for his own good, perhaps.

For almost ten years, beginning in June 1966, he worked as a City Letter Carrier in the Pompano Beach Post Office. He had an excellent work record under ten different supervisors, none of whom had ever filed a complaint. He won the safe driving award every year and almost never called in sick.  From the time he first began as a “part-time flexible,” or PTF carrier, filling in on other carriers’ routes, he got a reputation as a “runner.” He would finish delivering all the mail for the route he was covering for the day and then return to the office long before the regular carrier would have.  This did not sit well with some carriers, and especially with the union steward, who advised him to “just give eight hours work for eight hours’ pay.” 

But Dad was not trying to make anyone look bad. He was just working at his normal pace. His loyalty and reputation as a runner impressed many supervisors. He was always willing to help them out. During the widespread racial unrest in the late 1960s, Dad was the only carrier willing to go to some parts of town to deliver the mail, after finishing his own route.

He was a hard worker, but John McNulty was hardly a compliant or passive employee. He respected the rules, and followed them diligently, but when he discovered that his bosses were ignoring rules, he was indignant, and he let them know it.

Dad was impatient in safety meetings and would ask pointed questions, which could put supervisors on the spot. Dad had a basic distaste for “sugar-coating” things and he was never afraid to speak his mind.

Although McNulty had many friends in the Post Office, co-workers as well as supervisors, he acted as a loner.  He did not trust most groups, and had strong opinions on many topics, which he did not mind sharing. He read a lot, knew a lot, talked a lot, and loved to laugh at human foibles. But some things- like dishonesty, laziness and injustice in general- made his blood boil.  He was frustrated much of the time. Sometimes that frustration boiled over into anger. He was known to be short-tempered. He once finished sorting the mail for his whole route, then, in a rage prompted by a verbal haranguing by his supervisor standing behind him spitting out insults and threats while he tried to work, he pulled over the entire eight-foot-high case, spilling the day’s mail for his whole route across the floor.

He was angry, but Dad’s sense of humor and sharp wit helped him cope with the frustration and, possibly, with the boredom of the job. He liked to make up names for supervisors who seemed out of touch with the workers. He referred to Postmaster Wilton P. Banks as “Witless P. Blanks.” He wrote up parodies of their nonsensical bureaucratic memos and passed around his carbon copies to amuse co-workers. Disrespectful, ill-conceived, perhaps, but hardly fire-able offenses.

He would later refer to Supervisor Edward Tellian, the first supervisor ever to  complain about McNulty’s job performance, as “I, Supervisor Tellian,” since Tellian would always begin his petty and negative reports about Dad with the phrase, “I, Supervisor Tellian, observed Carrier McNulty…….”

Dad was clever about carrying out “nuisance orders” - directives he felt were illogical, and being unnecessarily imposed on him in particular.  One time a patron called to complain that Dad had not allowed enough time for them to get to the door to sign for a certified letter. When Dad returned to the Post Office, he was ordered to go back out to the address, ring/knock, and WAIT for the patron to come to the door. A couple of hours later, when the supervisor went out to find him, Dad was sitting on the front stoop of the patron’s home, stubbornly and literally following the supervisor’s order.

On another route, he insisted on taking the time, every day, to climb the stairs to deliver mail to a frail elderly woman in a second-floor apartment whose mailbox was on the ground floor. He continued to bring the mail upstairs to the woman’s apartment even after her written request for second-floor delivery had been refused by the postmaster. Postmaster Banks was not impressed, and gave Dad a hard time about defying his official decision to refuse delivery to the old woman. Dad had suggested she write to the postmaster in the first place to ask if her mailbox could be moved upstairs, so maybe he felt responsible for her trouble.

Supervisors were frustrated with McNulty, and possibly threatened by his intelligence, but they had no basis for serious disciplinary action against him.  In spite of his restless and critical nature, Dad was a reliable employee who received nothing but excellent job performance reviews from supervisors and appreciative notes form customers. He got along well with his co-workers, some of whom became life-long friends.  

But things changed in early 1975, when Edward Tellian arrived at the Pompano Post Office as Supervisor of Mails and Delivery. He was Dad’s direct supervisor, and he took an immediate dislike to John McNulty.

Tellian was the kind of man who was threatened, personally, by Dad’s forthrightness, and hated any perceived challenge to his authority. He was in a position to exert all kinds of control over a carrier’s day, and he used this bureaucratic power to mete out constant punishments to carriers he resented.

It didn’t take long for Supervisor Tellian to start acting on his personal antagonism towards Carrier McNulty, and he busied himself, almost daily, with finding ways to insult and discredit him.  The fact that he could not find a way to suppress McNulty’s antics enraged him over time.  

It was no secret in the Pompano Post Office that Tellian and McNulty did not get along. Tension between them began when Dad started asking questions in safety meetings, (called “stand-ups” because carriers were required to stop sorting mail and turn away from their cases to stand for several minutes listening to supervisors reading dry bureaucratic memos out loud, when they were itching to get their mail out to their vehicles.) Most carriers would just stay quiet and endure the boredom, trying not to delay the meeting. Not McNulty, who would ask supervisors the hard questions.

Dad filed complaints about conditions that other carriers complained about, but were not willing to report.

He annoyed Tellian, for example, by refusing to take out a Jeep whose bad brakes had already been reported.

The antagonism increased between Tellian and McNulty for several months. Dad would ask for more time to deliver a new route, or a route which had just been adjusted to include several new streets, (a routine request, as mail volume varies daily,) and his written requests were refused, in writing. Then, Dad would be suspended without pay for using “unauthorized” overtime when he had to work late to get all the mail delivered.

In August of 1975, in the worst of the Florida summer heat,

Dad returned to work from a rare weeks-long sick leave to recuperate from chest pains, or what he liked to refer to as “a period of forced idleness. ” He was ready to get back up to speed on his route, and prove that he had recovered from what he believed was a temporary setback.

But what he was faced with on his first day back on the job was a whole new route to learn and deliver.  While he was out, supervisors had changed Dad’s route assignment from a mounted (truck) route to a park-and-loop route. This involved parking the truck every few blocks and walking with up to 35 pounds of mail in his bag to deliver to each house in a several-block area.  A park- and- loop route was much more physically demanding than a “mounted” route. 

Dad, 52 by then, was working six days a week, 12 hours a day, to get his new route delivered. Tellian and Munnell could only have been further frustrated by McNulty’s outstanding job performance under harsh circumstances.

When Dad consulted the union shop steward about his situation, the shop steward advised Dad to comply with orders because “Munnell is a tough man and hard to reason with.”

At some point, Dad quit the union because he had philosophical objections. He resented paying dues which in part paid for union representatives to attend their annual conventions in luxury resort locations, while serious issues at the Pompano Post Office were being ignored. When it was suggested that, instead of complaining, he could serve as a union steward himself, and enjoy the free vacations. Dad declined, but not before commenting that one such union convention was being held in Hawaii, where, he said, “he had visited in 1942, as a Navy enlisted man aboard the flight deck of the USS Enterprise at Pearl Harbor, and was not in a hurry to return there.”

Although the union is legally bound to represent non-members equally with members, their commitment to Dad waned as his difficulties mounted. So Dad became his own advocate, and saved every scrap of paper documenting the harassment he was enduring.

Dad later recounted the pattern of harassment in his own words in an affidavit filed by the union as part of a grievance:

“When a new route became available at another station (Margate Branch) I bid on it in order to get away from Mr. Tellian.  In Margate, things went smoothly.  About this time a Mr. C.R. Munnell was appointed Customer Relations Manager of the entire Pompano Beach delivery area. He noticed me working at the Margate Branch and asked me why I was there. I told him that I ‘just want to be away from Mr. Tellian and enjoy a peaceful relationship with supervision.’ Munnell replied, ‘You better get used to him because he’ll be here long after you’re gone.’   Shortly after this, Tellian was transferred to the Margate Branch as a Carrier Supervisor. Since that time I have been subjected to intense harassment by both Mr. Tellian and Mr. Munnell.

“One morning in early March, 1977, as I was preparing mail for delivery on a route I was not familiar with, Mr. Munnell approached me. He stood directly behind me, making remarks regarding my working speed. I objected to his remarks as I was having sufficient trouble trying to get the mail in proper sequence. Mr. Munnell accused me of loitering on the job and threatened to send me home and possibly take further disciplinary action against me. At this point I asked to speak to a shop steward. Munnell told me to ‘shut your damn mouth and face your case.’  When the shop steward inquired as to the nature of the disturbance, Munnell replied, ‘I only asked him to shut his case and face his mouth.’ When asked to repeat his reply, he did so in exactly the same manner. Mr. Munnell then ordered me into his office, where he berated me in very abusive language, telling me, ‘I don’t like you, your work, or your attitude, and I will make it my business to have you removed from the Postal Service.’ “

              Dad relished the fact, for several years hence, that he had witnesses to this exchange.

Dad was not the only worker Tellian and Munnell

harassed. Others complained to the union about the tactics the supervisors used,  but those tired carriers were eventually beat down, and one by one, left the Post Office with early retirements or disability pensions.

In December of 1976, the simmering standoff between McNulty and Tellian reached new levels when Dad filed a safety complaint about exposed electrical wires on the loading dock, dangling over a puddled area where carriers had to walk. Tellian ignored that report, which Dad had filed appropriately, with Tellian himself. He asked Tellian about it every day for weeks. When he got tired of waiting for any kind of response, Dad brought it to the attention of Tellian’s supervisor in Fort Lauderdale, further pressing Tellian’s buttons. The fact that Dad had “gone over his head” offfended Tellian deeply.

By the spring of 1977, Tellian had not succeeded in breaking McNulty, which he himself had said was his goal two years earlier.

In refusing to “play dead” in response to Tellian’s abuse, and then, in overtly defying him, Dad antagonized Tellian to the boiling point. Thus began the activation of a huge bureaucracy. Rumbling into action with its crushing power, it changed the course of our father’s life.

Tellian’s stated goal, since he arrived at the Pompano Post Office, had been to separate Dad from his job, and he foolishly relied on his assumption that he would be able to grind McNulty down.  

Tellian and Munnell worked in concert for almost two years to get rid of McNulty. Their strategy was to  “to get him out on a disability.”

From management’s point of view, this time-honored method for getting rid of a troublesome employee would be a “win-win.” Typically, the carrier would sign on the dotted line, and walk away with a pension for life, and the Post Office would be relieved of an annoying employee.  Tellian and Munnell  started building their case - that McNulty couldn’t handle the physical (and possibly the emotional) demands of his job.  But they would find that they had targeted the wrong guy.

Tellian was determined to get McNulty out, but he didn’t have any serious ammunition.

So Carrier McNulty and Supervisors Tellian and Munnell maintained a tense standoff for almost two years.  

The balance shifted when Tellian stumbled upon an unexpected vulnerability in the beleaguered carrier. In late 1977, Tellian made a formal complaint to the union steward that he had observed McNulty with “slurred speech” and that he did “not seem to be aware of his surroundings,” further implying that McNulty was using non-prescription drugs on the job.

Now, in order to defend himself and  explain this situation,  Dad was forced to reveal what he had been denying to others, and possibly to himself- that he did have some medical problems.  He had no choice but to provide written proof to Tellian that he had a prescription for the sedatives he was occasionally using.  

Two years earlier, in late 1975, Dad had taken almost five weeks’ sick time to “rest up” from what he wanted everyone to believe was temporary muscle strain.  What his pride did not allow him to reveal at the time was that he had been diagnosed with a potentially serious heart condition, a condition ironically made worse over the next two years by the constant harassment at work. He had been keeping this condition hidden from everyone who knew him.

What brought him to the doctor in a rare visit in the summer of 1975 were symptoms of chest and shoulder pain that he could no longer ignore.  Dad thought/hoped the problem was from carrying a heavy mail bag on a new route. He was 53 years old at the time, and had been on the job for nine years.

Our family doctor, Dr. Shaw,  examined Dad and ordered an EKG which showed that he had more than a case of sore muscles. There was some blockage of the arteries of the heart, causing pain upon exertion or stress.

The truth is that Dad was diagnosed with “arteriosclerosis (partially blocked arteries) with angina (heart pain) on exertion.” This meant that heavy physical work and emotional stress was causing pain, and cumulatively damaging his heart.  Dr. Shaw urged him to see a cardiologist for possible bypass surgery, which Dad declined.  At the time, open-heart surgery was a rare and risky proposition, especially for a man who had always stayed as far away from the medical establishment as he could.

To manage Dad’s symptoms, Dr. Shaw prescribed rest for four weeks, and Valium and nitroglycerin tablets as needed, and recommended that he request temporary “light duty” at the Post Office. Dad reluctantly took the sick leave, and he used the Valium when he had to, but, as a point of pride, he never asked for permanent relief from the physical demands of his job.

He considered his “heart trouble” cured after he was able to go back to full-time regular work as a carrier after a temporary light duty assignment. Over the coming year, he would work not just his regular hours, but 250 hours of overtime delivering the mail: “Enough to buy a new GMAC truck- the first new vehicle I had ever owned,”  he proudly wrote, years later.

Dad and Mom had been divorced for seven years by then, so no one in the family knew of Dad’s heart trouble. He certainly did not share this with any of his children.  Now he was being forced to reveal his vulnerability to the supervisors with whom he was engaged in a battle of wills. They could possibly use this information contained in a two-year-old doctor’s report to build a case that Dad had a permanent physical disability.

He had no choice but to provide Dr. Shaw’s report to prove he was taking medicine as prescribed, but the last thing he wanted was to provide those supervisors with information they could use in their effort to make him look disabled.  It was a point of pride for him, and he was willful and stubborn about it. For two years, he had never formally used his heart condition as a reason for objecting to the overwork and harassment. He had been determined to treat his “heart trouble” as a private matter, a temporary setback, and to prove through hard work that he had recovered fully from it.

Now he would have to show his hand.

Dad may have actually felt hopeful about having this medical report, which he chose to see, essentially, as a ticket to work, in spite of his heart condition. The doctor said he could perform the “normal duties” of his job as long as he took the medication he was prescribed when he needed it. In addition, it gave him the documentation he needed to show that Tellian’s accusation that he was “using non-prescription drugs” was false. He was taking prescribed medication occasionally, as needed. He thought he had denied Tellian a tactical move against him.  This would prove to be not the case at all.

Dad later referred to this development when he made the argument for himself in a letter to NC Senator J. Helms, one of the other congressmen he appealed to later on in the fight for his job:

“ In August 1975, it was determined that I was suffering some kind of heart disease. This caused me to use up over a month of sick leave time, after which I returned to work on a limited duty basis.  I feel that I was making steady progress toward complete recovery. I was even able to return to my regular mail route (a heavy one,) and do an effective job.  Things were really looking up for me until a Mr. C.R. Munnell was assigned to this office as a “customer service manager.” I have not had a minute of rest since this man showed up here.

I am not a ‘trouble-maker’ type of person. I solicit comments by foremen and supervisors who have known and worked with me since June 1966 as to my performance of duties and general attitude concerning my job. I am not a drunk, a smoker, habitual absentee or late-for-work- type.  I am a 10-point veteran, with a service-connected injury suffered during combat on Oct 24, 1942, Santa Cruz Islands aboard USS Enterprise. The above injury (intra-cranial) has not interfered with my job as a letter carrier. It does cause some headaches at times. I am not an isolated case. The Munnell/Tellian team has been systematically attacking and harassing several older, ill or injured people in the Pompano Beach delivery area for several months. I seem to have presented a stumbling block to them by my refusal to lie down and play dead on command. I’ve heard rumors to the effect that Mr. Munnell was out to nail me at any cost. Now, I’m beginning to believe them myself.”

The union submitted a three-part grievance on Dad’s behalf in September 1977 which detailed unfair labor practices carried out by Tellian and Munnell. It  concluded with this paragraph:

“It is now obvious in view of the preceeding grievances that Mr. McNulty is and has been subjected to a personal vendetta with a conspiracy to deprive him of his means of livelihood. That the means to carry this out has been totally unethical and a disgrace to the functions of an agency of the US government. Mr. McNulty has been willfully subjected to discriminating, abusive and injurious treatment by E.F. Tellian and C. R Munnell, assigned to extremely heavy and the most physically exerting duties, to wit- distributing large heavy mail sacks filled with parcels to carrier cases and then assigned by Mr.Tellian to work out in the 90-degree plus heat carrying a heavy mail satchel while having a letter in his possession revealing complainant’s medical condition, demonstrating a malicious attitude toward the complainant, and a punitive demonstration that may have caused permanent damage to his health. This is not in accordance with any procedures of government employment.”

The grievance letter outlined the legal remedies that were being demanded- that the Post Office accommodate Dad in accordance with the National Association of Letter Carriers’ union labor agreement with the Post Office (Article XIII, National Agreement) - to provide him with a temporary light duty assignment, to restore lost pay and sick and vacation time he was forced to use when he was wrongfully suspended for two week periods (twice) without pay, and to provide permanent relief from the harassment. It ended with this paragraph:

“ Grievant now demands a supplement to heretofore remedies- a letter of apology be submitted to grievant and be made part of his personnel file. “

Dad was not looking for vengeance; he just wanted to know that his livelihood was secure and to be able to do his job in peace. It was important to him, though, that his ordeal be acknowledged, and he wanted that acknowledgement to be personal. He wanted Tellian and Munnell to apologize to him in writing, and on the record.

As he prepared his response to Tellian’s complaint about alleged drug use, he rationalized that once Tellian knew about his heart condition, Tellian would realize that he himself could be held personally responsible for emotional stress that could possibly cause Dad to suffer a fatal heart attack on the job. This would include the continual harassment and unnecessary extra working hardships to which Tellian had subjected Dad. Maybe then Tellian would be scared into backing off. Maybe now McNulty would get some relief.

Instead, Dad’s revelation gave Tellian exactly what he needed- evidence of a distinct vulnerability in McNulty. It would provide exactly what Tellian needed to build his case for forcing a disability retirement on this troublesome carrier.  

Apparently, Tellian was anything but intimidated. Instead, he leaped upon this evidence of “weakness” in McNulty and began to capitalize upon it.

Dad would come to discover that his supervisors would cruelly use this information to further harass him, increasing his route by over 100 deliveries, refusing his written requests for overtime in the morning and then writing him up the next day for using “unapproved overtime” when he had to work late to finish delivering his route on a heavy mail day.

He was “written up,” with false and slanderous reports of poor job performance entered into his file. At least twice, Dad was punished with unpaid week-long suspensions for using “unapproved overtime.”

As they built their case for separating him, Tellian, with the cooperation of Postmaster Wilton Banks, scheduled a Fitness for Duty exam for Dad with the US Public Health Service (USPHS) in Miami. Tellian and Banks must have been so sure this exam would easily provide the final bit of evidence they needed that they did not bother to prepare the USPHS doctor by requesting Dad’s medical records.

Dad, believing he was fit despite his prior heart trouble, was more than willing to be examined by a doctor.

He kept the appointment, of course, and hoped for the best. The medical exam was, in a stunning understatement, not what he expected.  Here's what Dad wrote about that appointment with a doctor at the US Public Health service in Miami.  

The said "physical examination" in fact, never occurred.  I was interviewed by a Dr. Seymour Feld, who did not perform any kind of medical examination whatsoever.  He did not take my temperature, check blood pressure, or listen to my heartbeat, or do any of the things which are commonly considered to be part of a medical exam.”

Following this appointment, the doctor, Seymour Feld, MD, wrote, “In absence of medical records, I cannot make a final determination (on his fitness for duty.)” 

There was no follow-up exam requested by the Post Office.   Unbelievably, this physician, tasked with performing a Fitness for Duty exam, did not perform any kind of medical examination.

After a genial two-hour conversation between the doctor and patient (interrupted several times by the doctor’s other duties,) the doctor wrote a two-page report which acknowledged that the patient had reported that, in the past, he had experienced stress and effort-induced symptoms of chest pain which were being managed with prescribed medications. The doctor wrote, “He should be temporarily transferred to work that is less physically demanding.” The doctor added, “I see no evidence whatever of any mental disturbance nor, in prolonged conversation, any lapse in awareness of surroundings,”  which led Dad to conclude that he had possibly been sent, covertly, to Miami for a psychological as well as a physical evaluation.

Tellian probably expected the Fitness for Duty exam to result in a routine confirmation of the Postal Service's assertion that their employee was no longer fit to carry the mail- a rubber stamp. The results, however, supported anything but that conclusion. But Tellian, inexplicably, arrogantly,  proceeded as if Dad had actually failed the exam, and he was never called on to account for that mendacious absurdity, except by John McNulty.

I doubt the doctor, or the postal supervisors who ordered the exam, ever expected that his glaring lack of procedure would become the subject of the five-year-long legal and bureaucratic battle which ensued.

How had the doctor failed to perform a physical exam when that was the obvious purpose of the appointment?  After all, it was called a Fitness for Duty exam. The doctor apparently wrote his report based on what Dad told him about his medical history. He did not hide any medical information from the doctor, including the physical and emotional harassment he had been dealing with. But the doctor simply did not have the information he needed to write a

comprehensive report of Dad’s fitness for duty.  And there was no follow-up exam ordered.

Dad was always careful to not blame Dr. Feld, in all of his complaints following the Fitness for Duty exam. The fault was not the doctor’s; it was the Post Office’s, for failing to follow up, as Dr. Feld had suggested, with a thorough physical exam informed by Dad’s medical records.

So the Fitness for Duty exam, which the Post Office was counting on to prove their case that McNulty could be forced to take a disability retirement, was without substance. But that did not matter to Postmaster Banks.

When Dad received the doctor’s written report on the exam, and saw how unsubstantial it was, he must have thought he had all the proof he would need that he was indeed entitled to keep his job, and that he was certainly not permanently disabled.  He must have felt relieved and maybe even lucky to have dodged a bullet.

The Postmaster and his two supervisors, meanwhile, treated the ridiculous excuse for a  Fitness for Duty exam as if it had in fact found McNulty unfit.

The incomplete Fitness for Duty exam was followed by an order for Dad to meet with a Postal Service disability retirement counselor. This counselor told Dad, “You are qualified to quit working and live off the taxpayers for the rest of your natural life.” In addition to the fact that the counselor’s statement was not true (because Dad insisted that he did not qualify for a disability designation.) Dad was repulsed by what the retirement counselor said to him, and he refused to sign.  

If he had agreed to it, this pension would have provided him with a reliable income for the rest of his life.  He was only 54, and he would never have to work full-time again.  He could escape the harassment and be done with the whole ugly ordeal.

But he refused, because it would have gone against his very character to go along with this scheme.  He had no formal education, but he was well-read and skilled. He was proud of his ability to support himself and his family with hard work. He had a resume packed with good honest labor to prove it, starting from the time he quit school at 14 to help support his family during the Depression.

From one of the many letters he would write to congressmen and others over the coming years, laying out his case against the Post Office:

“I’ve worked as a construction laborer, a steelworker (blast-furnace and open-hearth basic steel processes, ) truck driver (inter- and intra-state work,) aircraft mechanic, (aboard USS Enterprise CV6 during the business negotiations with Japan,) refrigeration mechanic, and various other fields of honest endeavor.”

Ironically, Dad had been qualified to collect a 100% disability since 1942, when his skull was fractured by shrapnel during a battle in the South Pacific when he was serving on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. He had spent several months in a Navy hospital, and then gone back to serve as an aircraft mechanic for another four years, under war conditions. But he never collected the full compensation to which he was entitled because of his injury, until 1968 when he and Mom were divorced and he needed to start paying child support for the youngest three of their children still at home. 

Dad was morally opposed, in the extreme, to collecting a disability pension like the one being proposed by his supervisors now at the Post Office.  

So, following the Fitness for Duty exam and the meeting with the retirement counselor,  Dad kept showing up for work and working hard.  This surely frustrated Tellian and Munnell.   They couldn’t get him to take the easy way out, as they had traditionally done with other postal employees they wanted to get rid of. 

But the two supervisors were determined. Despite the questionable findings of the cursory Fitness for Duty exam, Tellian sent Dad, by Certified Mail, an official Letter of Proposed Removal.

“August 5, 1977- This is a notice that it is proposed to remove you from the Postal Service…. The reason for this proposed action is that, as a result of a Fitness for Duty examination performed on May 20, 1977, you were found to be not fit for the full duties of a city letter carrier….. ”

Those sentences were followed by bureaucratic language about how, where and when he could answer to the proposed removal, as well as this sentence: “If you do not understand the reason for this notice, contact the undersigned,” who was, of course, Edward F. Tellian, Supervisor of Mails and Delivery. 

Dad would answer this notice, all right. He would call their bluff and he would object with all his might.  You can see the shadow on the back of this letter, of his typewritten lines. He must have started writing his response immediately, without taking a moment to find a clean sheet of paper to type on.

For the time being, though, he treated the proposed removal as another act of harassment, and continued to show up for work in uniform and on time, ready and willing to carry his route. For the next three mornings,  Tellian would tell him there was no work for him. Dad’s time card had been pulled from the rack, so he couldn’t clock in. But he would come back the next day, ready to work. He gathered the signatures of two dozen co-workers who attested to these facts, until he was taken out of the building, without resistance, by the local police department.  

Twenty years later, when he was dying of heart disease in the Pittsburgh Veteran’s Administration Hospital, Dad made a kind of speech to us, his six adult children gathered in his room.

“You kids know that the Post Office tried to work me to death.”

Then he said nothing for what seemed like minutes as he struggled to stand from his chair.  On shaking legs, he made eye contact with each of us in the room before he declared, slowly and deliberately,

“But  every morning, as I pulled into the parking lot, I would say to myself-  ‘Let’s see how much FUN we can have with those bastards today!’ ”

His eyes glinted and his smile was wide, but the way he said the word “fun” was dead serious.