Little girl writes heartfelt thank you letter to mail carrier and gets many in return
An 11-year-old South Dakota girl grateful for her mail carrier keeping her linked to the outside world amid coronavirus lockdowns wrote him a thank you letter. Much to her surprise, she got one back. Then another ... and another.
Her dad documented the exchange on Twitter.
“Emerson, my 11 year old, is on a bit of a wild ride with the (The United States Postal Service) and our local mail carrier, Doug,” Hugh Weber wrote. “And I think there’s a deeper message to it all. First, the backstory...”
Weber went on to detail the contents of his daughter’s letter, which told Doug he was “important” in her life and made it “possible” for her to maintain friendships during the coronavirus lockdown.
She continued, “The reason you are very important in my life is because I don’t have a phone so how else am I supposed to stay in touch with my friends? You make it possible!”
She put it in the box, smiled when he took it & that was enough.
The next day a package arrived with some stamps & two letters.
Doug had shared Em’s letter with his supervisor, Sara, and they both wanted to share how touched they were by her note.
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“She put it in the box, smiled when he took it & that was enough,” Weber wrote. “The next day a package arrived with some stamps & two letters. Doug had shared Em’s letter with his supervisor, Sara, and they both wanted to share how touched they were by her note.”
It turns out that the gratitude was mutual as Doug too seemed to appreciate sharing a very human moment during dark days. His supervisor took over the correspondence while the mail carrier went back to putting his life on the line so Em and the rest of the country could continue to function.
In a response titled “Dear Parents of Emerson Weber,” the supervisor wrote that she had also submitted the story to a USPS newsletter and the response was overwhelming. Sara then asked Weber how correspondences with his young daughter might be most safely and responsibly submitted. The post office rep also thanked Weber for his hard work as a dad.
“This has sparked great joy in a time of turmoil in our country and I thank you for raising a daughter like Emerson,” reads the letter posted online by Weber. “May her love for her country and the United States Postal Service be continued throughout her years.”
Postal workers from all over the country wrote to thank Emerson, according to her proud dad, who posted photos of collectible stamps and other keepsakes that arrived at his family’s Sioux Falls, S.D. home.
Sara said that, as an essential worker, Doug might not be able to maintain regular correspondence, but she sure could. Em started writing that very afternoon.
This is when things get interesting. The next week, we got a letter address to “Mr and Mrs Weber.” It seems that Sara had shared Em’s note as a “Token of Thanks” in the internal newsletter for the Western US and there were some postal folks that wanted to thank her.
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A pair of commemorative Franklin Roosevelt stamps arrived from a maintenance manager from Minnesota who encouraged the girl to become a collector, starting with those 20-cent collectibles circa 1982.
Several postal workers thanked Emerson for acknowledging their hard work. According to Weber, his daughter is now in touch with at least one mail worker’s entire family. She has also been asked to become pen pals with a soldier in Kuwait, whose dad worked for the USPS. Emerson’s letters tend to come in colorful, upbeat envelopes. A postal worker from a small rural town asked to stay in touch too.
Weber encouraged others to reach out to their local post office to say thank you and see if they too make postal pals around the country. His family’s snail mail story quickly made the rounds on social media.
“I just took a moment to look at the numbers and over 7 MILLION people read Em’s @USPS story," he wrote.
Emerson finally got to meet Doug too, her dad reported, at a safe distance.
“Today, we saw Doug getting out of the truck with two BOXES of letters from around the country,” Weber wrote. “We snapped a quick photo through the door as he and Emerson met for the first time. It was a beautiful moment on silent reciprocity.”
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