Wheeling Woman Puts a Stamp on Her 36-Year Career With the U.S. Postal Service
Niamh Coomey Trending
WHEELING -- Janice Brady has seen a lot of changes in Wheeling in her nearly four decades working for the United States Postal Service. Recently, she shut her window at the downtown post office for the last time.
Brady officially retired at the end of April after more than 36 years serving Wheeling's postal needs. From her first day on New Year's Eve in 1988 while juggling multiple customer service jobs to her last day, Brady has loved her customers and working for the USPS.
Brady was born in Wheeling and grew up playing in the streets of South Center Wheeling with her five older siblings.
"We played ball in the street, we went to the 26th Street playground, went to the swimming pool up there, went to the library, hung out inside. There was no air conditioning back then. We'd go into the store to get out of the heat," Brady said. "It was a good neighborhood to grow up in at the time."
This was before the construction of Interstate 470 knocked out the stretch of Moiston Street Brady grew up on.
"My street doesn't exist anymore," she said. "It's all gone, the houses are all gone."
As she got older, Brady took on a number of bartending, waitressing and other odd customer service jobs, working each a couple days a week.
When she started working at the Triadelphia post office in 1988, it was just another part time gig for Brady.
"I was supposed to be just work four hours a week," she said.
She kept juggling her other jobs until she was able to transfer to the main post office in Center Wheeling. After that, she transferred again to the location at the federal building, where she has remained since June of 1993.
Brady knew she wanted to work the window. At the time, there were three workers behind the desk at the federal location, which soon trickled to two, and then just one.
"You had to bid, it goes by seniority, and I didn't have hardly any, but nobody else wanted the job," Brady said.
In her role as a lead sales and service associate, Brady spent much of her time ordering supplies, moving mail and selling stamps. She said she liked that it was "like being a postmaster but without the headaches."
Downtown Wheeling was different back then.
"That's when the Pittsburgh Steel building was full of people," Brady said. "There were more people here in town, more people lived in town, more people worked in town, so it was a lot busier then."
Brady was around to see the construction of the new federal building in the early 2000s, and the number of ways that things changed following the Oklahoma City federal building bombing in 1995 and, a few years later, 9/11.
All mail that came or left the building had to be X-rayed, and any time there was a big trial at the courthouse, detection dogs would be deployed to sniff the envelopes and packages for explosives.
Once, the dogs indicated there were explosives in some packages that were waiting to be picked up.
"We had to find out what they were and where they came from and it turns out they were brass locks and they came from the same place where they manufacture dynamite so there was a tiny bit of powder on them," she said.
Brady has also seen usage of the postal service change over time. With the rapid rise of the internet, she started seeing less and less people send physical mail. However the USPS has remained steadfast even amid pushes for privatization in recent years.
"The mail has gone down since computers, but the post office is still hanging in there. It's been in the constitution since 1775, but we'll see what happens," she said.
The Downtown Streetscape project and other ongoing construction has also lessened the customer load she handles, Brady said. The frequent road closures and lack of accessible parking has slowed things down, she said, but she is excited for the new developments in Wheeling's future.
"I was hoping that by the time I retired they'd be done with the streetscape but there's new things coming like that huge hotel they're going to build down there by the Wesbanco Arena," she said.
In her customer-facing role, Brady interacted with all types of people, from federal judges to those struggling with poverty. She has had to handle a customer with a gun, been followed and yelled at, but overall, her customers were her favorite part of the job.
"People are very interesting and I love my customers and I'm gonna miss them the most," she said. "I've made a lot of friends and I'm really going to miss them."
Brady also loved her lunch breaks during the week by the Ohio River.
"I love going down to the river, I would walk down to the river a lot on my lunch hour. When my husband was here we would drive down and eat lunch down there. I just love the river," she said.
Now that she is retired, Brady is looking forward to spending more time with her husband when he travels frequently to New England. The pair also want to plan trips to Ireland, Austria and Germany to connect with their heritage.
Brady is also excited to get back into working out, among her other hobbies and to-do list items.
"I love to read, I love to travel, I have to clean out my house, I have to get rid of things," she said.
The end of her career with the USPS is bittersweet, Brady said.
"It's sad and good at the same time," she said. "I got lucky when I got the job at the post office. I was 32 when I got it, I'm 68 now. If I could have gone to college and had to do it over again, I'd be a journalist."