Hawleyville PO:

Where Mail Service Is Neighborly

By Steve Bigham

The Hawleyville Post Office has always been a place that’s had a neighborhood feel to it. Go in there once or twice and everybody knows your name.

With Mark Favale at the helm now, that special feeling is sure to continue. Mark, who has been at the Hawleyville PO the past two years, got the call from Hartford last week announcing his change in title from officer in charge to postmaster.

The Hawleyville post office has not had a permanent postmaster since 1994. Mr Favale becomes the post office’s 16th postmaster in 157 years, although there have been several “officers in charge” during that time. The first postmaster in Hawleyville was Glover Hawley.

“This really is a neighborhood post office. People like it because it reminds them of a time gone by,” said Mark this week – a train whistle blowing in the background. “It’s a community post office and that’s what makes you want to do well every day.”

The Hawleyville post office (zip code – 06440) is located along Route 25 in the same building that housed the post office the day it first opened back on March 27, 1844. The building is owned by the Housatonic Railroad, which has recently announced plans to renovate the building or put a new one up. In 1929, the post office moved next door to where the Hawleyville Deli is now located. It returned to its original site in April of 1981.

Today, the post office is not served by carriers, but continues to provide both mailbox service, as well as retail. And, as Hawleyville continues to grow, this little office will only get busier.

“As a postmaster working in a small office, you’re really a working postmaster – emptying the garbage, cleaning the floor, working the window, putting up the flag in the morning. At a larger office, you’re an administrator, you’re a manager,” said Mr Favale, who lives in Brookfield with his wife, Maryann. The couple has two children, Adam, 21, and Terra, 23.

Unlike the Newtown Post Office on Commerce Road, the Hawleyville office is something of a crossroads place with customers coming from a variety of different towns.

“We get people from all over here – Newtown, Brookfield, Danbury, Bethel…,” Mr Favale said. “They come in, we give them personal service and then we send them on their way and they’re happy.”

Mr Favale, 48, has certainly put in his time for the US Postal Service, spending 18 years as a letter carrier in Wilton, working in human resources in Stamford, and as an “officer in charge” in both Redding Center and Redding Ridge. Prior to that, he worked as a social worker in Massachusetts in the years after graduating from Sacred Heart University.

“The whole community is so happy for Mark just because he is so involved,” commented Laura Smolen, one of two clerks in the office. “He is very deserving of the job and everybody knows him. That’s the whole thing.”

Also in the office is Rich Ruscitto.

This week, the office was adorned with balloons celebrating Mr Favale’s promotion, and customers stopped in to congratulate him.

“You deserve it,” they all said.

For Mark Favale, it has always been about the personal service, the one-on-one connection he has with his customers. A desk job? That would not have suited him.

“It gets stressful sometimes here, but in a good way. I guess I’m something of a people-person. This is what I like. More contact with the customers. There are a lot of postal clerks who don’t enjoy that,” he said.

In recent years, the town has made strides to promote economic development in the Hawleyville area. And since last summer, several large corporations have expressed interest in the area, which has recently been re-zoned to allow for more commercial growth.

Mr Favale welcomes the idea of a busier Hawleyville area. “That’s how we stay open,” he joked.

For now, however, Hawleyville remains pretty much the same as it did 40-50 years ago. And despite the fact that Interstate 84 runs through the heart of it, Hawleyville is said to be one of the few undeveloped areas still existing between New York State and Hartford.

“The whole area has stayed pretty much the same,” Mr Favale said. And so has the post office.