A Stamp of Approval for Retiring Middleburg Postmaster
T
By Leonard Shapiro
he town of Hicksville on Long Island is best known as the place where Billy Joel began making so much sweet music. In Middleburg, there’s another reason to thank Hicksville. The suburban town 30 miles east of Manhattan also produced another talented fellow who’s made the Middleburg post office keep humming along over the last ten years. That would be Ken Quinn, the town’s multi-tasking postmaster and a man who has relished becoming an integral part of the community. At the same time, he also described the last two years as “pretty brutal,” mostly due to a couple of closely related stressinduced factors—the Covid pandemic, and Amazon. And so, at age 62 and feeling more than a bit burned out, Quinn has decided to retire effective August 31 after 36 years of otherwise mostly satisfying and enjoyable employment with the U.S. Postal Service. He’d like to take a healthy, stress-free deep breath, the better to avoid more than occasional pandemicinduced disasters when he arrives at the post office from his home in Sterling. And he’d definitely like to play a lot more golf, one of his lifelong passions. Middleburg is a relatively small post office that handles an awful lot of mail for its 1,800 box holders. And since Covid restrictions shifted shoppers away from brick and mortar stores to the convenience of their
computers, the staggering increase in the number packages, many from Amazon, put a significant strain on the staff. At least one Middleburg postal worker missed time recovering from Covid. Another 75-year-old route driver was physically limited in lifting heavy boxes. And Photo by Leonard Shapiro Quinn found himself Retiring Middleburg working longer hours Postmaster Ken Quinn and handling a variety of different tasks, from driving a delivery truck to sorting mail into post office boxes to woking the front window to handling necessary administrative work. The onslaught of often bulky packages from Amazon and other internet shopping services filled Middleburg’s somewhat antiquated postal trucks floor to ceiling and forced constant re-loading and multiple trips. “I’m delivering packages every day,” he said. “We really had too many and not enough help because we couldn’t hire anyone. Then it became dreading the phone ringing at home and wondering if something happened at the office. “I was getting calls when I was off or away on
vacation, and there really was no time to ever just relax. If I was not a supervisor, I’d still be working in the post office. But I’m not complaining, it’s just the way it was.” Quinn, who moved to Northern Virginia at age 17, will keep working once he retires. His wife, Monica, runs the purchasing department of Source One, which sells commercial flooring, and he likely will do some part time hours there. In addition to raising two now adult sons, over the last 25 years he’s also been a busy softball umpire at all levels of the game—youth leagues, high school, adult. He played high school baseball on Long Island, and softball into his 50s, as did his wife. He has umpired as many as 350 games in a single season, though in recent years he’s averaged a more manageable 150. Quinn clearly has throughly enjoyed his time in Middleburg, praising what he described as a dedicated staff “that really works well together.” He’ll most miss “becoming a part of the community. I grew up on Long Island, in a town where I went to grade school through high school with the same kids. “I’ve gotten to meet a lot of great people here. It’s funny, we’ll drive down to Richmond, and I’ll see somebody from Middleburg. That happens a lot wherever we go. I like that, and I’ll miss that part of it. But for me, it’s the right time.”
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