A group of Los Angeles filmmakers is chronicling stories from letter carriers.
The Postal Tales project encompasses short videos and podcasts about letter carriers and their stories.
Christian Moeller, a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, and his team launched the nationwide project after reading about the Postal Service’s Operation Santa program.
“I was touched by the beauty of how carefully the United States Postal Service handles those letters,” Moeller recently told the National Association of Letter Carriers’ site.
“We [realized] that we were tapping into … an aspect of humanity revealed through the multitude of untold stories of letter carriers.”
The most recent video is a 4-minute short filmed in Johnstown, PA, and narrated by retired carriers Don Podrasky and Joe Antal, who recalls delivering mail to immigrants in coal and steel towns in the 1960s.
“A piece of mail from ‘the old country’ was like gold to these people,” Antal says. “The mailman was a welcome sight around these parts of town because he was the messenger and only connection to their roots and the life they left behind.”