Chapter 3 Disabled, Hell!

Chapter 3         

Disabled, Hell!

 They say the Irish don't know when they're beat. That statement may as well have been the theme for the next four years of Dad's life.

 In January 1978, at the age of 53, when he was removed from his position as a Letter Carrier, Dad started a one-man campaign to defy the Post Office’s action. He would deny their allegation that he was disabled and keep denying it, in spite of mounting odds that his objections would ever be taken seriously by the Post Office.     

Now he wasn’t just clashing with a couple of supervisors in the workplace, he was fighting the entire Post Office. 

Without his Post Office paycheck, he had to find work where he could, to support himself and the youngest three children who were still living with Mom. He took low-paying, hard-labor jobs in factories and warehouses. But during this time, his most pressing and true occupation became the business of proving that he was entitled to his job, and that the Post Office was wrong in depriving him of it.

 One might expect an embattled worker in his situation to welcome the relief that a disability pension- for -life could give him.  But Dad had the opposite reaction. He was offended and outraged at the very idea that two mendacious supervisors could have stolen his job from him- a good job that he had been proud to hold for more than ten years.

Not only had they succeeded in removing him from the Postal Service, the supervisors had spent the two previous years trying to wear him down, physically and mentally. Having endured constant overwork and harassment at the hands of Edward Tellian and Richard Munnell, Dad hadn’t come this far just to give up. He would not take the easy way out, and he was not going to slink away from this fight.  

The last thing Supervisors Tellian and Munnell expected was that John McNulty would pass up the disability retirement offer. The supervisors surely thought that, once they had managed to get him fired, their effort to get rid of the troublesome McNulty was complete.

But they were wrong.

 Dad responded to the official Notice of Removal of August 15, 1977 with a letter, the first of hundreds he would write, in a relentless letter-writing campaign which consumed the better part of the next five years of his life. He objected to the firing with everything he had. His case was consistent and simple: two postal supervisors who resented him personally had acted in defiance of federal employment procedures when they fabricated their case for an early disability, tried to force it on him, and then caused him to be fired for refusing to accept it.

Dad further insisted that for him to ACCEPT a disability retirement package would actually constitute fraud on his part because no medical authority had shown him to be disabled.

Dad was not in denial. He acknowledged that his heart had been affected by the stress he was enduring at work, and that his chest pains had, in fact, interfered at times with his job performance over the previous two years.  But he held Tellian and Munnell responsible for causing that stress. Without their harassment, Dad believed the chest pain would never have been an issue. If he had become weakened in any way, his injury had been caused by the very supervisors who were accusing him of being weak.

He also believed his heart problems were temporary, and that, once he was free of “supervisory harassment” he would be able to resume working at the job he deserved to keep.

Dad’s mantra throughout his five-year-long fight to keep his job was that he was absolutely not disabled, and that his firing was nothing more than an attempt by two individuals – the supervisors Tellian and Munnell, to crush him by bureaucratic means. He believed in his bones that their scheme to take away his livelihood was an example of fraud and ill will. He would dig deep and find the strength to fight the unjust firing on principle.

McNulty was not just a disgruntled ex-employee expressing his disappointment in losing his job; nor was he hoping for some kind of revenge. He was not suing for a financial reward for the damage done to him; he just wanted to work without harassment.

His argument against the removal action included very specific objections, and he was confident that the facts, once revealed, would prove that he was right. He knew that, under normal circumstances, he was fit for the duties of his job, and that he was certainly not permanently disabled. He knew he could prove that the Post Office had no case, and he hung his appeal on proving a single fact- that the Post Office had failed to provide its own evidence. They had no support for their claim of “total disability,” because they had bungled their own medical exam. To him it was cut and dried.  The Post Office had no business declaring a fit man disabled. John McNulty would insist, consistently, that he was anything but disabled.

It would be at least a couple of years before Dad would come to feel the utter frustration of trying to prove a negative.

After his firing, Dad had 30 days to respond to the Letter of Separation, and he got right to work on it.  His first written response was a letter to Edward Tellian acknowledging receipt of the notice to remove him from his job. In this letter, he recounted the fact that there was, technically,  no Fitness for Duty exam. His writing style- literate, clear and insistent, but never dry,  and larded with wit and sarcastic humor-  is evident in this excerpt from that first letter:

“Your reason for removal is erroneous and fallacious in that the said ‘physical examination’ in fact, never occurred on Friday May 20, 1977. I was interviewed by a Dr. Feld at the USPHS (public health service ) facility, Miami, Florida. With all due respect to Dr. Feld, it should be pointed out that he could not have arrived at the conclusions regarding my physical condition by merely sitting at his desk and conversing with me. I will swear under oath that Dr. Feld never touched me except to shake my hand at the conclusion of our talk. He indicated, in writing, that he found ‘no indication of any mental disturbance.’  I am still patiently awaiting a physical examination.”

He would fight Tellian and Munnell, he would fight the entire Post Office, he would enlist the help of his congressional representatives and anyone else who would listen to his story, and, finally, he would find a way, a dramatic way, to demonstrate to all that he was anything but physically unable to perform the duties of a letter carrier.

Dad had friends among the carriers and in his personal life who encouraged him.         Even the union shop steward wrote a letter of support. He himself was not a big fan of John McNulty and his constant efforts to hold management accountable on various issues. But still, he wrote:

“It is with mixed emotions that we defend Mr. McNulty, as his physical well-being is our foremost concern.  Our position is that he was unjustly and involuntarily removed. If he was reinstated and again subjected to the same conditions and treatment, we may be condemning him to an early grave. Mr. McNulty feels that he can carry any route that is not

overburdened. He wishes to continue working. It is our position, and Mr. McNulty is in accord, that if his status had been determined in a different atmosphere and by proper procedures, all this would have not occurred.”  

Tom Chambers, Vice President, Barefoot Mailman Branch 4694, National Association of Letter Carriers, Pompano Beach, Florida.

Also, William D. Stricklin,  a former supervisor who had been working in the Pompano Post Office to witness the harassment, wrote this letter to a staff member in the Postmaster General’s office:

 “…John worked many years under my supervision and was a good, co-operative carrier. John volunteered to carry mail on the west side of town when there was a racial disturbance that caused cessation of delivery for several days. He did this as well as taking care of his own route. He earned the safe driving award each year.  All in all John was a good carrier. He was dependable and honest. John was harassed by his supervisor, and also the manager of customer services, C. R.  Munnell until stress got the best of him and he went to see his doctor. It was a short while later that Munnell put him on light duty and reassigned him to my zone. A short time after that, they told him there wasn’t any light duty and pulled his time card. I was ordered to tell him there wasn’t any light duty though he showed up for work each day, until he was separated as being disabled. I would certainly take John McNulty back as a carrier if I were back in the Postal Service for he was dependable and honest, one who always gave his best.”

William D. Stricklin, retired postal supervisor, Pompano Beach Post Office

 Once he had submitted a written response to the removal action, and set the record straight about the non-existence of a medical exam, Dad’s next step was to file a formal appeal with the US Civil Service Commission, which scheduled a hearing for a few months in the future.  This hearing involved a detailed accounting of all Tellian’s complaints about John McNulty and all of Dad’s complaints about the way he was being supervised by Tellian and Munnell.  Transcripts of the testimony presented in that hearing show that Munnell and Tellian “gave false evidence,” to put it politely.  In Dad’s words, they lied.

Eleven witnesses were prepared to speak, under oath, on Dad’s behalf, in person, on the record. Co-workers, supervisors, union representatives.  Not one was called to testify.  It was John McNulty representing himself vs Tellian and Munnell representing the Post Office.

On top of the fundamental discrepancy about the fact that no actual physical exam had been performed on Dad, and no follow-up exam had been ordered, other points were discussed in this hearing. In creating a case that Dad could not keep up with his mail volume, for example, Tellian referred to route examinations (where supervisors follow a carrier all day, to asses a carrier’s efficiency.)  These supposed route exams  had taken place on dates which happened to be Dad’s scheduled days off. Sloppy at best, deceitful at worst.

One of Tellian’s many complaints about Dad’s performance on the job was about certain days when he took too long to deliver a heavy route causing him to go into overtime. Tellian claimed Dad had not submitted the required written request for help in the morning. Dad recalled that the required request for help that he had indeed submitted had been refused (in writing, by Tellian) and he had the official forms to prove it.

This kind of evidence was simply ignored in the appeals hearing.   Dad had documentation that the Jeep he was ordered to use one day, a vehicle he had reported as needing repair, broke down in the middle of the route, causing a two -hour delay. This testimony was recorded, then simply ignored.

As a result of this hearing, the Civil Service Commission concluded that the Post Office was correct in offering McNulty a disability retirement, that Dad could and should have taken the deal, but had refused. His appeal was denied, and the decsiona was final. In short, the Civil Service Commission chose to accept the US Postal Service testimony without question, while it essentially dismissed Dad’s. Dad was starting to see what a battle between one man and the entire Post Office would be like.

McNulty, not one to be dismissed and ignored, typed up a letter in response to this decision. Maybe they had not fully understood the case. Maybe they hadn’t heard him the first time he explained that there had been no medical exam.   

He wrote:  “The agency’s case appears to have been built entirely upon the basis that I ‘failed to pass a Fitness For Duty examination.’ I explained, at the appeals hearing on April 4, 1978, that no such examination ever took place. Can you please explain to my satisfaction how this could have been missed by your appeals officer?  I do not understand why the appeals officer did not contact the doctor. He is not hard to find.”

At the end of the letter was the doctor’s office address in Miami. Dad followed up himself by asking Dr. Feld to write a statement that he had not actually conducted a physical exam on him on May 20, 1977. As soon as he received this short letter from the doctor,  Dad forwarded it to the Civil Service Commissioners.  

He continued to make his point with this:

“The reason for my failure to submit a request for disability retirement is: I felt then, and I still feel, that such a request might have been fraudulent, in view of the complete lack of any sound medical reason for such action.  I am willing to abide by the findings of any medical doctor regarding my present physical condition and capability to perform the duties of Letter Carrier.”

It occurred to Dad at some point in this process that the Postmaster’s request for an appointment with Dr. Feld for a Fitness for Duty exam may have actually been for a psychological examination. Munnell and Tellian had both entered comments into Dad’s personnel file with their opinions about alleged mental instability. These allegations seemed designed to bolster their case that Dad was about to have a nervous or physical breakdown.  Neither of which was the case.

After a conversation ranging over two hours in his office, (interrupted several times by other issues the doctor had to attend to) Dr Feld  wrote in his report that he had found “no evidence whatsoever of mental disturbance.”

 In fact, Dad recounted later that they discussed a sign on the wall of the doctor’s office which said  “HE WHO LAUGHS LASTS.” The doctor and his patient  agreed that most people did not understand the meaning of the sentence, and thought it was grammatically incomplete. So the doctor recognized and noted Dad’s intelligence and humor.

The Post Office, in its ongoing dealings with Dad’s case, proceeded to treat the incomplete and inconclusive Fitness for Duty Exam as if it had actually stated, in black and white, that Dad was in fact  permanently disabled, as if the doctor had found Dad to be completely physically unable to perform the duties of his job, in spite of the fact that there was no such conclusion.

At this point, when his Civil Service Commission appeal had been officially denied, six months after he had lost his job, the many letters and official forms he had accumulated probably filled a few file folders. By the end of his struggle with the Post Office, five years later, he would have amassed enough paperwork to fill a three-drawer file cabinet.

Dad apparently saved everything from this period of his life, but had not organized it. Maybe he died before he could get to this task. His papers, by the time I started reading through them in 1998, did not seem to have been sorted or filed chronologically. Newspaper clippings, personal letters and cards, and receipts were all mixed in with official correspondence, pay slips and postmarked envelopes.

Taken as a whole, the boxes of papers appeared to me to be dry and intimidating, but once I started dipping in and reading the letters, I was rewarded with gems of Dad’s wit and humor in the most unlikely places- as a PS to a letter, for example, or as a side note scribbled on an official form.

On an application he filed in March, 1979 with the Department of Labor, (possibly for unemployment compensation, which he never received) in the space asking for “employing agency,” Dad wrote, “Since I have not received a paycheck since January 1978, the local postal facility could hardly qualify as the “employing agency.”

In a letter to Hamilton Jordan, President Jimmy Carter’s press secretary, in 1978, Dad noted that he had heard Jordan using the term ”innocent until proven guilty ” in a routine press conference. Dad took it upon himself to write Jordan with his own thoughts on that theory.  He described the circumstances leading to his recent Civil Service decision and then said, “ I was given an adverse decision because ‘you have failed to prove that you are not disabled.’  I know it sounds screwy but it is absolutely true. How in hell can I prove a negative? I know that I am perfectly capable of performing the duties of Letter Carrier, but do not know how to go about proving it. The Postal Service seems to be ignorant of the old axiom, ‘The burden of proof falls to the accuser. ‘ ” 

I doubt Dad expected a response from the president’s press secretary, but the act of expressing his frustration directly to a man in such an important position may have given him a few moments’ satisfaction. 

In a PS to another letter, he wrote,” Thank you for your kindness and please excuse the humor.  It’s my only legal weapon.”

And, in another PS, he wrote, “ I am finding that the simple task of proving that I am not disabled is not all that simple after all. I’m sure glad that I am not required to hold my breath for ten minutes.”

He wrote to countless congressional representatives, and to officials in various offices of government. In most cases, when he appealed to a bureaucrat, they replied with interest and enthusiasm, and assured him they would look into his case.

Then, after they had consulted the Post Office for information about the McNulty case, they were told that Dad had been duly found disabled and that he had exhausted all of his appeals.

Almost without exception, the bureaucrats decided to accept the Post Office’s version of events. Predictably, they would write Dad back, telling him that they had “looked into his case” and concluded that there was nothing more to be done. Some wished him well.  

We will never know how many letters Dad wrote and mailed and responded to, or how many different people he appealed to in the years he was fighting for his job.  He kept everything, but not in any kind of order that I could understand. I had some of the letters, from the boxes of papers Dad had sent me over the years. Later, after Dad died and Jack moved to his place in West Virginia, I received an organized collection of Dad’s Post Office letters which Jack had read and made notes on. This collection of letters revealed more details about his struggle, and it gives us a sampling, and a fairly good idea of how relentlessly he pursued his goal. His many correspondents include, in part:

- Personnel Department, US Postal Service – June 8, 1977  (This was Dad’s request for all of his records, in preparation for the filing of a grievance over unfair working conditions by the union.)

- Wilton P. Banks, Postmaster, Pompano Beach, Florida  Post Office – July 29, 1977 ( This was the union’s grievance filed with the US National Labor Relations Board on Dad’s behalf, while he was still employed. )

- Appeals Review Board, US Civil Service Commission- May 25, 1978

-US Department of Labor- July 14, 1978

-Hamilton Jordan, press secretary for Pres. Jimmy Carter, White House- July 20, 1978

-Bureau of Retirement, Insurance and Occupational Health, US Civil Service Commission - December 7, 1978

-US Attorney, US Department of Justice- December 7, 1978

-US Department of Labor, Employment Standards Division - January 11, 1979

-General Accounting Office, Fraud Task Force- February 13, 1979

-Preston B. Jones, Manager, Employee Relations, US Postal Service- April 2, 1979

-US Civil Service Commission, Medical Division- April 27, 1979 and April 30, 1979

-Brian J. Gillespie, Office of Human Resources, US Postal Service, - May 4, 1979

-Office of Appeals Review, Merit System Protection Board- May 26, 1979 and May 31, 1979

-Senator Edward Kennedy, US Senate- June 20, 1979, and September 5, 1979

-Office of the Postmaster General, attn. Mr. Conway, Mr. Hastings, Mr. Lintner, cc. Rep. Daniel Mica, Sen. Richard Stone, and Sen. Lawton Chiles -  July 20, 1979 (Senator Chiles had himself walked the length of Florida- a distance of 500 miles, during his campaign.

- Joseph Shaia, Supervisory Claims Examiner, US Department of Labor - August 10, 1979

- Mr. T. Walker, Office of Employee and Labor Relations, US Postal Service  - August 23, 1979

- Mr. Charles Hawley, Asst. General Counsel, Legal Affairs Division, US Postal Service – November 16, 1979

- Rep. Patricia Schroeder, US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Civil Service – March 23, 1980

- Merit System Protections Board,  Office of Special Counsel – April 22, 1980

- Office of Personnel Management, Retirement Claims Department, Freedom of Information Requests Division, cc. Reader’s Digest – April 25, 1980

- Postal Life Magazine – April 30, 1980

- Office of Consumer Affairs, US Postal Service – May 1, 1980

- US Rep Daniel Mica – May 15, 1980

- Dr. Seymour Feld, US Public Health Service- May 15, 1980 (This was a letter asking the physician who had seen Dad for his May 20, 1977 “Fitness for Duty“ evaluation to provide a letter stating that the “patient” had in fact not received a medical exam. The doctor complied. That letter, which Dad shared with many people, had no apparent impact on Dad’s case.) 

- Mr. Quigley, Office of Postal Inspector, US Postal Service – June 23, 1980

- Mr. James Conway, Deputy Postmaster General, US Postal Service - June 27, 1980

- Office of Personnel Management, Retirement Claims Office – September 9, 1980

- Senator Paula Hawkins, US Senate – Sept 15, 1980 

(Sen. Hawkins took great interest in Dad’s case, and questioned the Post Office’s initial responses to her. Their correspondence spanned two years, and included a detailed letter from Thom, sent to Sen. Hawkins’ office, detailing Dad’s predicament during the time he was walking toward Washington. Hawkins responded to Thom, asking him to secure Dad’s written permission for her staff to talk with Thom about the case (which Thom and Dad managed to pull off,  while Dad was on the road.) Sen. Hawkins invited Dad to meet with her staff when he completed his walk to Washington D. C., which he did! Dad mentioned her by name in his live television interview on NBC News when he was rehired, because he credited her with pressuring the Postal Service to intervene on his behalf. No one will ever know if Sen. Hawkins’ help was the crucial factor in the Post Office’s 1983 job offer which, in effect, justified John McNulty’s long struggle and proved the Post Office wrong.  

After the Civil Service hearing appeal near the end of 1978 played itself out, Dad had run out of legal options.

It was getting close to becoming a year from the time he’d lost his job, and at this point, he did something very unlikely- he submitted his own application for a disability retirement. Maybe he was tired of the struggle, and had started to lose his nerve and doubt his chances to win this fight. Or more likely to me, on the other hand, he thought he might challenge the Post Office by calling their bluff. Either way, the result of this particular exchange between Dad and the bureaucrats would prove to be the most clear and blatant example yet of the Postal Service’s hypocrisy, and would thereby fuel his resolve to keep fighting to be heard for several more years.

From a letter Dad submitted to the Office of Personnel Management, along with his application for a disability retirement, on December 7 (Pearl Harbor Day!) 1978:

“I submit this application at this time because it appears to be the only thing left to do. I am reasonably certain that I have exhausted all other remedies open to me within the Civil Service system, in attempting to reverse what appears to be a fraudulent claim by local management of the United States Postal Service.

I suggest that I am being removed for the wrong ‘reason for removal’ as stated by local management…

If I am, indeed, physically unable to perform the duties of my job, then I would be willing to accept disability retirement. However, I insist that my condition be determined by a physical examination prior to removal or retirement.”

After waiting almost five months for a response to his Hail-Mary play, Dad received this letter of decision on May 3, 1978:

“Your application for retirement under the disability provisions of the Civil Service Retirement Law has not been approved because total disability for useful and efficient service in the position of Letter Carrier has not been shown.

A careful review and evaluation by the Office of Personnel Management’s medical staff of all evidence submitted in your case fails to establish that you have a disability…”

You would think that the glaring conflicts in logic that Dad had been tirelessly pointing out, to anyone who would listen, would capture the attention of someone in some office, but no.

To a bureaucracy which customarily deals with people trying to convince them they are entitled to collect disability checks, a case like Dad’s was probably puzzling at the least. He was trying his damndest to prove he was not disabled. The irony was not lost on Dad, who tried to use this fact to his advantage, to appeal to some thinking person, sitting behind some desk somewhere, with a shred of humanity.

It was John McNulty against the Post Office, and the Post Office won every time.

I have often wondered how Dad endured this frustrating, antagonistic, disappointing battle.  He received little comfort or compassion from anyone, and hardly ever did he receive any hopeful news. He struggled to make ends meet, without his regular paycheck.

I have concluded that it was the struggle itself which kept him going. To have “rolled over “ would have destroyed him, mentally and emotionally. Writing all those letters was an action he could take. His fight was for more than principle or livelihood, it was also for his dignity.

He was good at it, too. His wit and humor must have energized him throughout his long battle. He wanted and needed to outsmart the bastards.

It was not until recently that I understood an underlying motivation that may have fueled Dad in this particular struggle-  he always wanted to be a lawyer. I never knew this until he told me, in 1967, when I had just graduated high school and was headed to college. I was the first in our family who had been able to pursue education beyond high school. Dad wanted to honor my ambition by taking me to a nice restaurant where he had earned some credit by repairing their refrigeration equipment in the kitchen. This alone would be a rare treat for me. I was 17, and I couldn’t remember more than a few times in my life when we had gone out to eat dinner in a sit-down restaurant. He proudly introduced me to the owner and to the cooks and waiters.

At some point during our meal, he made a point of telling me he was proud of me, which in itself stunned me. Then, he looked at me and simply said  “If I could have gone to college, I’d be a damn lawyer today.” I could not have been more surprised if he had told me he’d always dreamed of being a lounge singer. Dad- a lawyer?  Dad- who had always disparaged men who wore suits to work, men with briefcases, especially and specifically lawyers! Now I know why.

After more than four years of an excruciatingly frustrating bureaucratic struggle, I must assume that Dad reached the point where he experienced a sort of epiphany.  He did not put his thoughts on paper, that I know of, but somehow, one day, he awoke to a new realization: fighting bureaucracy on their terms, writing letters, using  the traditional tools of repeated explanation and evidence and reason and logic- was not going to work. He needed to get their attention in a completely different way. He needed someone in Washington to hear his  story directly from him.

Maybe he would just have to go there in person. And what better way to make the trip than by walking the entire way?

So, in the spring of 1982, he started planning for a hard journey, one that would show everyone, in an undeniable way, what John McNulty was capable of- walking more than 1,000 miles, from South Florida all the way to Washington, D.C.