The temporary closure of the Rector Post Office marks the end of an era, one that began more than 106 years ago.
Saturday was the final day mail was available in the old post office located in the front room of a private home occupied by Ida Ankney Tenney and her granddaughter, Hope Pennington. Beginning Monday, Rector postal patrons must travel to the Laughlintown Post Office for their mail, a trek many of them call inconvenient.
"It's an old-time post office in rich (Rolling Rock) country," said Eleanor "Ellie" Pennington, the current postmaster and Tenney's daughter, of the Rector facility.
Box-holder Joanne DeWitt described the post office as a friendly neighborhood gathering spot where patrons learned the latest town news.
"We're quaint," she said.
Local postal patrons hope a new location in Rector is set up soon.
The transition occurred because Tenney terminated the post office's lease, according to a July 27 letter sent to box-holders by William P. Battles Jr., of the Postal Service
Although Battles' letter describes the move as temporary, Rector residents worry it may be permanent. They've heard the post office wants to reduce the number of smaller facilities.
Diane Svoboda, a post office media relations spokeswoman, said the Pittsburgh District Post Office isn't following that policy.
"Remember, post office service is all about customer service and needs," she said. "If they are closing smaller facilities in other places, it's a last resort."
She said postal officials are reviewing all options to resolve the Rector situation.
"We're in the very initial stages of our search," she said. "The (Mountain Market) is one of many options we will look at. It could take a year (to settle the issue)."
Past postmasters
Rector's post office history includes five postmasters from the same family.
The first postmaster, Richard Lawry, was Tenney's uncle. He built hickory rockers in part of the house and served as postmaster from its opening in Dec. 21, 1898, until 1901 or 1903.
"I heard he didn't like the job," Pennington said.
Lawry's brother-in-law, Elwood Ankney, served next. His wife, Eleanor, gave birth to 11 children in the house; they raised their eight surviving children there, including Tenney.
Ankney's son, Fred Ankney, was the third postmaster, serving between 1935 and February 1982. Tenney said her brother handed out mail during store hours, until 10 p.m. He never married and died before he retired.
Tenney, the fourth postmaster, served between 1982 and 1990. She recalls residents coming to the post office on horses and in Model-T cars during her childhood, when her parents didn't allow the children to spend time in the post office.
She completed eight grades at the one-room Rector School.
"When I was 16, they got me working papers," she said. "Of course, I didn't get paid."
Through the years, people really used the many services of the facility, she said.
"In a post office like this, you had to know how to register, insure and certify mail and make money orders," Tenney said. "You have to know it all here."
In 1982 the post office department started paying the Tenney family $25 a month rent for the front room. Part of the $125 rent she currently receives pays for the post office heat and electric bills.
She retired at age 66, partly because of the transition to electronic services.
"I said, 'Hey, I'm not putting up with that,'" she said.
Tenney, 80, lives in the home behind the post office where she was born, grew up, married and raised her family with her late husband, Willis.
The current and fifth postmaster is Pennington, appointed in November 1990.
In the early 1990s, handicapped accessibility regulations came into play, Pennington said. "With the proximity to the road, there was no (way we could comply), so we had to (file) for an exemption," she said. "The post office came to confirm this."
Pennington said she adapted to all the new computers and electronics used by today's postal system.
"They are machines and they can't beat me," she said.
She's raised her three children two-tenths of a mile away from the post office.
When Rector residents became aware there was no lease for the post office, they became very unhappy, Pennington said, "but I need more room."
Origin of house uncertain
Pennington believes the house is 120 to 125 years old. Neither she nor Tenney is certain who originally owned it, but their family owned it when the post office opened.
Jane B. Kilgore, a Rector postal patron, said that before the facility opened, Rector was known as Mechanicsburg. Because another post office already had that name, the community was renamed Rector in honor of a long-established family headed by Lou Rector.
The facility was originally a post office-store combination located in the front room of the house, Pennington said.
"That's why the shelves are still there," she said. "When my grandfather died in 1935, and the way things were going, the store was phased out. I can recall only a bread rack left in the '50s."
The store sold everything from dry goods to clothing to some medicine, said Tenney.
"We didn't go to the doctor unless it was really bad," she said. "There was one medicine for fevers and (laxative) cherry gum and laxative chocolate."
Originally the lobby was bigger, Pennington said.
"In the '50s, they put the kitchen and bathroom in (space taken off the post office). The original bathroom was put in when we got indoor plumbing," she said.
The Post Office box (cabinet) is family-owned, said Pennington and Tenney.
"It originally belonged to my great uncle, Israel Ziders," Pennington said. "It was in the back corner of his store."
Ziders, owner of Ziders' Store along Route 30, was postmaster at Laughlintown, with the post office located in the back of his store, until 1961.
Later, when Rector's post office needed more boxes, Elmer Critchfield and his son, Ford, built them, Pennington said. That box section is next to the door.
"Customers can't get mail unless I give it to them," Pennington said about the call boxes faced by solid glass.
The outside mailbox also came from Ziders' Store, Pennington said.
"It hung here on the house until it was vinyl-sided in the 1990s. Then a post was made for it," she said.
A bench, used by residents as they socialized, sits in front of the lobby counter.
"We played a ball game there with a pocket knife," Tenney said. "You can see all the nicks."
The big old oak front door once had a mail slot in it.
"My uncle would put a box on a chair to catch the mail (when the post office was closed)," Pennington said.
The house has a kitchen, a dining room and five bedrooms.
It was a gathering place for four men, including Tenney's father, who played the card game 500 there on Friday evenings.
"I'd fill in if one wouldn't come," Tenney said. "I was between 8 and 11 years old. My mother despised cards and said the devil was in them."
The full basement is laid in stone, Pennington said.
"It's an interlocked stone layout. The floor is sloped so all the water runs into a corner drain and goes right out of the basement. There is a laundry and freezer down there," she explained.
In 1936, a downstairs bedroom was added to accommodate Tenney's ailing grandmother. Pennington recalls sleeping downstairs with her grandmother at night.
"It's used as a living room now," Pennington said.
Changes needed
In 2000, postal officials considered relocating the Rector Post Office.
Rita Giesey, of Ligonier, attended the March 2000 Ligonier Township council meeting at which Grover Binkey, township supervisor, shared a letter from the district manager of the post office. It said the size of the post office was inadequate and that officials were considering relocating it to an existing building or constructing a new building for it with "every effort" made "to maintain the facility within the center of town in Rector."
However, a mandatory freeze on new post office construction halted these efforts, said Svoboda.
Then, on Jan. 25 this year, Tenney sent a letter to postal officials in North Carolina giving them until June 1 to vacate the premises. She made the decision because it was no longer economically feasible to continue the rental, she said.
Svoboda said the Pittsburgh district heard in May that the post office had until the end of the month to be out.
"We asked for more time," she said. "(Tenney) gave us until Aug. 31."
Response to the July 27 letter to postal patrons has been consistent. Residents fear their local facility will be merged with another post office and the Rector Post Office closed.
However, Svoboda said there is a process to closing post offices that includes getting input from community residents and public hearings.
Kilgore said she was upset when she received the letter announcing that the post office might close.
"We're trying to keep it and move it to the Mountain Market," she said.
Bob Winters, of Rector, said residents should encourage the post office to move to the store.
"It's convenient to get milk and bread," he said. "There's an advantage to having things available (in the community)."
Pat Flaherty, owner of Mountain Market in Rector, said he's been working with the postal officials to make arrangements for moving the facility to his store. So far, he's gotten no conclusive word.
Petition circulating
Saturday was the final day Rector's mail was distributed from the front room of the private home owned by Ida Ankney Tenney.
On Monday, Rector Post Office's 105 patrons must travel to the Laughlintown Post Office to pick up their mail, according to a July 27 letter sent to postal patrons and signed by William P. Battles Jr., of the U.S. Postal Service.
For security reasons, all customers will need to show identification for mail to be released. Delivery addresses will remain the same.
This situation is temporary, Battles wrote.
Because another Rector site has not been chosen, postal service was moved to Laughlintown "to provide uninterrupted service to the customer," said Diane Svoboda, a post office media relations spokeswoman.
A standard postal petition to keep the post office open and in the community is being circulated by Albert Penney.
The petition can be signed at the Rector playground from 5 to 7:30 p.m. on Monday and Wednesday.
Residents unable to attend can contact Rector resident Jane B. Kilgore and her husband, Bob, to make arrangements to sign the petition. The Kilgores also are willing to visit homebound residents so they can sign the petition. Jane Kilgore said she's also written letters to government officials and newspapers to help save the post office.
