Jennifer Beasley retiring from P.O. after 3 decades

WINDERMERE — Jennifer “Ginger” Beasley has delivered mail in Windermere for so long that some of her customers, once young children, have grown up and now have kids of their own — and Beasley delivers parcels and letters to them now, too.

Beasley, 61, is giving up her route after 30 years as a mail carrier at the Windermere Post Office. Her retirement is official Sept. 30.

She had been the physical education assistant at Dillard Street Elementary School in Winter Garden for eight years in 1985 (and was known then as Ginger Twinam Spears), when she heard there was an opening at the post office in Windermere. She was hired as the carrier for the post office’s only route, which covered all of Windermere — “from in town to back of Disney over to Westover-Roberts and Hempel,” Beasley says.

Today, the town has 19 routes, and she delivers, by car, to 400 homes and businesses, including Windermere Elementary School, in her route. She said she probably delivers thousands of pieces of mail six days a week.

“It’s not unusual to carry at least 100 parcels a day,” she says. “We’re a very high-volume office.”

Cliff Cox, a rural carrier at the Windermere Post Office, says he met Beasley when he began his job about eight years ago

“She was welcoming, kind, instructional and helpful,” he says.

Beasley received the District 7 Member of the Year award from the Florida Rural Letter Carriers’ Association in 2012.

“If the Postal Service was starting today, and they were creating a new position of a rural letter carrier, their job description would be based on everything that Jennifer Beasley does as a carrier and as a person,” says Cox, who is the elected executive committeeman of this union. “Her retirement will leave a route that other carriers can perform the duties but will never fill the void left when she leaves.”

SOMETHING SPECIAL

Beasley has been known to frequently go beyond the regular carrier duties. When she learned of an elderly neighbor who had no family, she started helping him with some everyday duties, such as medical assistance, cooking, cleaning and social activities.

“I try to always lend a compassionate ear for listening and being willing to help him in whatever he may need on a daily basis,” Beasley wrote in a biography she wrote three years ago.

She once saw a customer’s mother who has Alzheimer’s disease wandering alone in the neighborhood, and she made sure she safely returned home. And, when she learned that two customers were disabled, she assisted them in getting front-door delivery, so they wouldn’t have to walk to the curb.

Doing for others seems so natural for Beasley, who also responded to every letter written to Santa Claus that came through the Windermere Post Office.

“I’ve probably done that for 20 years,” she said. “If they put a letter in the box, I always wrote one back, on letterhead, from Santa Claus from the North Pole. They usually got it back the next day; it was like magic. That was always something that was very special.”

The best part of her job, though, has been watching her customers’ children grow up, she said.

“In fact, one of the girls who’s a carrier here now with a 9-year-old child — I delivered her mail when she was a child,” Beasley said.

What will she miss most once she leaves?

“The people, the customers I’ve grown to know; I’ve had some of these customers for 28 years,” she says. “The family I have here. The people who I have trained who are still here. It’s been a long haul, but it’s been wonderful, every bit of it right here.”

Beasley is a former Winter Garden resident and was a cheerleader at Lakeview High School before graduating in 1971. Now living in Minneola, she said after Sept. 30, she and her husband, Charles, will be spending time with their grandchildren, working on their 20-acre property in Live Oak and traveling.

“I want to see America,” she says.

Perhaps, she can visit some of the very ZIP codes she became familiar with in her long career as a mail carrier.

HISTORY LESSON

Rural carrier Cliff Cox wrote a history of the Windermere Post Office for the Florida Rural Letter Carrier newsletter in 2012. Below are excerpts from his article.

Windermere’s mail was originally sent to nearby Gotha, where it was then ferried across the lake by boat or by land during bad weather to Windermere.

According to the National Archives, on Aug. 2, 1888, Dr. Abel Griffin was named postmaster of the town’s 75 residents, with 150 people within the application’s service area. When Griffin was awarded the post office, it was placed in the southern end of Windermere, just feet from the town’s railroad depot. This location is purported to be a log cabin that belonged to Griffin.

Since 1888, the Windermere Post Office has held 16 postmasters in nine different buildings. There were several tumultuous years between 1891 and 1911 in which service shifted between multiple postmasters and locations.

John Dawe was named postmaster on March 5, 1891, and then his father, Thomas Dawe, was named to the position just weeks later.

James Jaudon was given the job on July 2, 1898, but the title was returned to Thomas Dawe six months later. A month after that, George Shaw was named to the position, but he was replaced — one day later — by Ora Walker. On April 2, 1900, W.A. Vassar received the assignment.

The mail service was moved back to Gotha in 1900. But, in 1911, John Cal Palmer became Windermere postmaster and operated the post office out of his home until his Main Street office and store opened so on after.

Minnie Kline became the first female postmaster in May 1914 and returned the office to a location near the train tracks. She moved it again in 1920. When she sold the building to Nick Maddock in 1923, he became the postmaster. In 1925, he built a new post office and served in that building until his retirement in 1947.

Alice Given became postmaster and moved the post office to a new building in the same plaza in 1956.

In 1959, it was moved to 507 Main St., into a new building constructed by John Luff. In the 1960s, it was moved to the end of a shopping plaza across the street, where it remained until 1993.

According to the U.S. Postal Service archives, these are the remaining postmasters and their appointments: Charles Lee, June 1959; Reginald Johnson (officer in charge), September 1982; Barry Baker, February 1983; Gerald Neal (OIC), May 1999; Patricia Whidden, September 1999; Renee Terrell (OIC), 2005; and Gregory Franks, April 2005.

In 1993, the Postal Service purchased the land and built the current post office at 9300 Conroy Windermere Road, one-and-one-half miles east of downtown Windermere. Six years later, the town annexed the property.