Speonk Postmaster To Retire After 41 Years Of Service

The United States Postal Service’s motto, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” makes no mention of pandemic — yet after the past year, it’s safe to say Speonk Postmaster Jim Ferrarie has checked that box.

And now, after 41 years of service to the USPS, Mr. Ferrarie is retiring. He has been the postmaster of the Speonk Post Office for 16 of those years, getting to know families and a community alike.

“I’ve reached 41 years, you can retire after 30, my kids have finished with college — it’s just I think I need to turn the page and do a little bit of a different chapter in life,” Mr. Ferrarie, 61, said. “I can’t make any more of a difference here. I’ve done everything that I could here to make this place as customer friendly as possible.”

The job of a postmaster, the director of a post office, has become more complex over the years, Mr. Ferrarie noted, with a greater administrative component. Each day, he arrives at the office at 6 a.m. just to complete forms — he said he wakes up at 4 or 5 a.m.

In Speonk, the USPS does not operate home mail delivery, meaning residents must come to the post office to pick up their mail. For Mr. Ferrarie, this has allowed him to become far more familiar with the faces of the community than other Postal Service workers might.

“It’s a very family-orientated post office in the sense that somebody has to come from their family every couple of days to pick up their mail,” he said.

He recounted getting to know people over the past 16 years and their stories: children growing up and going off to university, being able to recognize and call people by their first name and helping local veterans.

In fact, Mr. Ferrarie said that was the highlight of his tenure with the USPS: helping veterans and the elderly population receive the services they need from the Postal Service.

Mr. Ferrarie also passions himself on improving the Speonk office over the years — an office he helped design. From maintaining the general cleanliness of the interior to decorating the walls with children’s artwork, it was the little things that made the most impact on the office’s appearance for Mr. Ferrarie.

“Simple things like from putting a light on the flagpole and having the proper flags here, to putting flowers in the front of a post office … just making the driveway appearance presentable and customer friendly,” he said.

He has also served the community in ways beyond his job description: Each year, he secures a visit from Stony Brook University Hospital’s mobile mammography van, which screens for breast cancer.

Over the pandemic, the Postal Service faced an array of challenges nationally. Locally, Mr. Ferrarie said his office saw at least a 300-percent increase in package volume.

“We never stopped coming into work. The place has been open every single day that it’s supposed to be, without any hiccups,” he said. “That’s a team effort here that we try to project to the customers, and we’ve been very lucky to be able to do that every day, one way or the other.”

This, even as the office is down an employee or two — Mr. Ferrarie said his office should be staffed with “three and a half” workers. But since March 2019, it’s been just two workers.

Mr. Ferrarie is unsure of when he can retire — he’s slated to leave the second week of September — because of this staffing shortage. He may end up retiring at the end of the year instead, if the office can’t find staff earlier, he said.

“We’re short an employee for a year and a half, and I’ve been trying to hold the office together with one employee, so it was a lot of extra pressure on me and the other employee here,” he said.

After he completes his tenure, Mr. Ferrarie said he’d like to take a cross-country trip, and plans to pick up a few hobbies, like golf or fishing.

For now, he’s still in the post office each morning, doors open at 8 a.m. sharp.