In 1979, Pat Hall broke through the glass ceiling at the Hoboken Post Office. Before Hall, no woman had faced the rain, wind, and snow as a letter carrier in the mile-square city.
“I had to prove myself,” she said last week, “that I could do the job that they were doing, maybe better.”
After six months, Hall said she was doing the job better and faster than some of her male peers. Now, 30 years later, Hall is retiring and looking back at the time she spent going door to door in Hoboken.
Man criticized her
Hall said she stepped on the bus one day after taking the carrier job, and a man confronted her. “ ‘You women are taking jobs away from men,’ ” she recalled him saying.
“It was the wrong day [to be asking that question],” Hall said.
Hall responded, “I’m trying my hardest to do my best. My husband is disabled and I have to work. At least I’m not in the Welfare line collecting a check.”
She said the crowd on the bus agreed with her and gave a small round of applause, and the man soon apologized.
Some people might have been haunted by what they should have or could have said to such a question. Hall just said it.
The pitfalls of letter carrying
Hall covered many corners of the city over the years, and faced different challenges along the way.
Like many mail carriers before her, she has been attacked by a dog. A big black stray dog bit her leg as she was delivering along Madison Street years ago.
She said she was able to hold the dog off after the bite, jamming a gate closed against his still-lunging body until an elderly man with a cane came along and used his walking stick to force the dog back inside the gate.
She also fell into a hole one time. She walked into the foyer of a house on Clinton and closed the door behind her. She took a step backwards and fell into a hole behind the door.
Apparently, the owner was doing work below the flooring behind the front door and had not blocked off the area.
Hall suffered some “eggplant-sized” bruising on her hip and cuts and scrapes, but she recovered.
Return to sender
Hall has a reputation for making sure every piece of mail finds its way to the right recipient. A fellow female mail carrier said Hall does not like to send any piece of mail back to the sender, making extraordinary efforts to find the correct address or person it was meant for.
“I really do go out of my way,” Hall said. “I’ll place it.”
She sorted out a letter last week that only had two first names on it and was intended for one of the 100-plus apartments in a building.
By the end of the day, the letter was in the right hands.
Neighborhood friends
She said she has a good relationship with many people on her routes.
From the elderly couple on Grand Street to the young woman on Clinton Street whom Hall used to see in diapers, she has friends all over the place.
One time she broke a bottle of perfume she was supposed to deliver, and even though it wasn’t insured, Hall went out and replaced it right away.
Another time she brought a Christmas present to a mother and daughter – Hall knew they didn’t have much – and left a note: “From Santa.”
These types of gestures are what have endeared her to the people she comes in contact with every day.
No more letters
On Saturday, Feb. 28, Hall will deliver her last letters and packages and walk away from a job she loved.
She has four children, and three are still living at home in Garfield, N.J. with Hall and her husband.
Hall’s husband already had some health issues at the time she took the job. But things got worse, she said, when he fell to the floor of Our Lady of Grace Church in Hoboken while painting the ceiling in the early 1980s.
She said he had 17 fractures in his back and hasn’t been able to work much since.
Living on half of her salary will be hard, she said, but filling her time will not.
“I will keep busy,” she said. “I cannot stay home.”
Most of all, Hall said, she will miss the people she worked with and the town she served.
Timothy J. Carroll may be reached at tcarroll@hudsonreporter.com.