Bath County residents fight to keep rural post office

WILLIAMSVILLE The general store is gone, as is the barbershop. Slim's grocery is boarded up. The grain and feed warehouse is a fading memory. Rusted gears by the side of the road are all that's left of the old mill once powered by the Bullpasture River.

What's still here in Williamsville -- population uncertain but certainly small -- includes a stately red-brick, white-pillared church, a few homes by the big river and the U.S. Post Office with its American flag flying over ZIP code 24487.

The post office, two tiny rooms inside a ramshackle clapboard building attached to the home of the former postmaster, serves about 200 people in this remote, mountainous region of Bath County. The post office has been tucked in the building since 1942 and in Williamsville since the 1800s.

Residents here are angry over the possibility that the U.S. Postal Service may close the Williamsville post office by the end of May. They believe the Postal Service just wants to save money. And under a federal law aimed at ensuring service for rural and remote areas, economizing cannot be the sole factor in closing a post office.

But closing small, rural post offices appears to be part of a trend nationwide and in Virginia as the money-losing Postal Service struggles to make headway in the recession, its critics said.

The Williamsville post office handles about 15 to 20 patrons daily, generates revenue of about $40 to $50 a day and offers 14 post office boxes. But the post office also is the heart of a rural community knit together in ways city people can't understand.

"This is our history," said Pam Webb, who is leading the effort to keep the post office open. "This is what makes us Williamsville. We don't want to lose that. We want to be on the map."

"This is more than worth the money," added Stuart Hall, a longtime member of the county's Board of Supervisors. "These people are the backbone of America. All we're asking is for them to give us the same service as the rest of the United States. All we want is what we have."

Besides, if the Williamsville post office closes, the next-closest for many would require a 50-mile round trip to Millboro, residents said.

"I'd do anything in the world to keep this post office here," said Terry Roberts, who lives with his disabled mother and partially paralyzed brother. "They can't afford the gas. We can't afford to drive 50 miles to get some stamps."

The post office is currently run by a temporary postmaster, LaDonna Smith, who said she could not comment on the dispute over the possible closing.

Cathy Boule, a Postal Service spokeswoman in Richmond, said no decision has been made about Williamsville. "At this point there really isn't any status. We're looking at every option."

Boule said the possible closing of the post office came about after the landlord said he would end the lease in May because he wanted more than the $138 a month that has been paid since 1972. The Postal Service considered the price fair because of the tiny space -- 189 square feet -- but offered to pay $35 to $40 more a month.

"The ideal situation would be to renew the lease," Boule said.

The landlord, elderly and ill in the hospital, could not comment for this article. But Williamsville residents said the rent paid is absurdly low and doesn't allow the landlord to make a profit.

Boule said she understands the emotions of those who live in and around Williamsville. "I feel very bad for them. This kind of thing is always very sad."

The National Association of Postmasters of the United States, made up of retired postmasters, is critical of what it calls a quiet strategy by the Postal Service to close small, money-losing post offices such as Williamsville -- despite a charge to provide service to all Americans, including those in rural areas.

Betty Eickler, a postmaster association member who keeps track of closed and suspended post offices nationally, said the trend is to quietly and quickly suspend operations of post offices deemed to be losing money -- as many are in rural areas. By suspending and not officially closing a post office, the Postal Service dodges many regulations that otherwise would keep a post office open, she said.

"They temporarily close it and it never opens again," said Eickler, a former postmaster in New York. So far this year, the Andover post office in far Southwest Virginia is the only one in the state where operations have been suspended.

The Postal Service ended its first quarter with a net loss of $384 million as the recession contributed to a 5.2 billion-piece decline in mail volume compared with the same period last year, officials said. Part of the service's strategy to bolster its bottom line is to stop building post offices.

"The first thing that comes out of their mouth is about money," said Webb, a Williamsville native who also complained about what Bath residents consider the high salaries paid to the postmaster general and other top officials. "It makes your blood boil."

For Opal Alt, 84, born and raised in Williamsville, postal service has helped define her community since her childhood, when -- as she recalled -- the mail was handed out by a postman on a buggy pulled by a white horse that had to ford the Bullpasture three times on the way to pick up the mail at Headwaters.

"I depend on this post office," Alt said. "I don't drive and I'm a widow. Back here you have to learn to survive the best way you can. I depend on the mail."

Contact Carlos Santos at (434) 295-9542 or .