by Bea Peterson
Ann McGrath was a homemaker. Her girls had just started college when she took the job as part time postal clerk in the Grafton Post Office as a favor to her friend Pat Ryan. That was 30 years ago. “I loved the job,” she said. “I loved the people. That’s the part I miss.” [private]She said she has seen local kids born, then go off to school, then marry, then she has seen their kids come into the Post Office. “There were lots of happy moments and some sad ones, too,” she said. “So many people over the years.”
There have been many changes in those 30 years. “Stamps went up, a lot of internet use, fewer letter writers,” she said. Working at the Post Office, she said, “was like going to spend time with your friends and getting paid. I got to know so many people.” Ann laughed when she said she would see people away from the Post Office “and I could remember their box number, but I couldn’t remember their name!” She wasn’t always in Grafton either. Occasionally she worked in Cherry Plain or Petersburgh. She’s even done the Rural Route a couple of times.
Now, she said, it’s time to go on to something else. She will spend more time with her husband John, and she will continue with her church work. Ann is on the Parish Council and a member of the Altar Rosary Society of St. John Francis Regis Church, which is part of Our Lady of the Snow parish. “I do whatever is needed there,” she said.
Family will keep her busy, too. Her daughter Kathleen and her husband Robert Ploss live in Grafton. Maureen McGrath lives in Gansevoort, NY, over by Saratoga, and there is the Nicholas family; their extended family. “They have ‘adopted’ us,” said Ann. She remembers when the triplets were babies and helping to line them up and feed them. Those babies are now 15.
“Maybe down the road I’ll join the Senior Citizens,” she said. “I used to hear them next door having a good time.”[/private]