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This picture and the accompanying article was taken from page 1 of the January 23, 2002 issue of the DELAWARE WAVE newspaper.

A SIGN OF SUCCESS - Joan Thomas and Tony McClenny stand beside McClenny's mailbox on Ashwood Street in Bethany Beach.
By Kerin Magill, Staff Reporter

If you've driven down Ashwood Street east of Route 1 in Bethany Beach lately you may have noticed a new addition to the landscape. 

Mailboxes.

Two of them.

That may not sound earth shattering, but for residents of Bethany Beach east of Route 1, it is a sign of a new era.
The owners of the mailboxes, Anthony McClenny and Joan Thomas, are the first residents east of the highway to receive mail delivery.

Their odyssey began with simple questions posed to Bethany Beach Postmaster John "Jack" Powell regarding mail service, when they moved permanently to the town -- about nine months ago for Thomas and 18 months ago for McClenny.

When McClenny and his wife Claudia moved to Bethany Beach in August 2000, he went to the post office and asked about mail delivery.  He was told, he said, that there was no delivery in his area, and in order to receive mail, he would have to pay $14 a year for a post office box.

When it was time to renew his box, McClenny said, he was "shocked" to learn the fee had increased to $20.  He again asked about mail delivery and was again rebuffed.

McClenny then contacted Powell's supervisor at the South Jersey District office in Bellmawr, N.J. in all, he wrote three letters to Ray daiutolo, consumer affairs manager for the South Jersey District.

Meanwhile, Thomas, too, began her quest for mail delivery.  She, too, ended up writing to Daiutolo, asking for consideration of mail delivery. 

On Dec. 15, she received a letter from Powell, stating that her "request for free mail delivery" had been denied.  Powell's letter said her home is outside the quarter-mile circumference of the post office within which homes are entitled to a free box if there is no delivery.

Thomas said this week she never asked for free delivery -- she just felt mail delivery should be offered to residents of the east side of town.

Powell's letter also said she should fill out a request for delivery and that he would let her know where to place her mailbox.

"[McClenny] wanted free delivery, he petitioned me, and he got it," Powell said.

Powell said the lack of mail delivery on the east side had never been an issue before. "We're having problems with people that come out of the city and they're not used to this," he said of the lack of delivery.

Although Powell said postal service guidelines do state that anyone within a quarter-mile of a post office who does not have mail delivery is entitled to a free box, no one had asked for the box fee to be waived. 

He also said that while the postal service does have guidelines concerning the boxes and the mail delivery, "I didn't really think it would pertain to us."  Powell said he thought Bethany Beach's unique status as a resort town, with extremely crowded summers and sparsely populated winters, would be considered a special circumstance.

He said he initially refused McClenny and Thomas' requests for delivery because of concerns about the ability of a delivery vehicle to get to their boxes during the busy summer months.  "Safety is an important thing here," Powell said.

Thomas said she believes the safety of residents is a reason mail delivery should be extended to the east side of town.

"When the road [by the post office] is flooded and barricaded, which happens quite often, it is indeed somewhat of a hazard," particularly for the elderly residents of the town, she wrote in an Oct. 11 letter to Daiutolo.

While some residents welcome the social aspect of going to the post office to retrieve their mail, there are times when it is a real inconvenience.  Thomas and McClenny said.  Particularly, they said, in the wake of decreased lobby hours after the anthrax scares.

Of the postal service's decision to provide mail delivery to her and McClenny, Thomas said, "I'm sure it's not going to be that much of a burden or a problem."

Powell, on the other hand, is fearful of the effects of his decision.  Since he began working at the Bethany Beach post office 20 years ago, deliveries have increased from 125 to 2,000.  Post office box holders, meanwhile, have increased from 200 to 1,500.

"I didn't know I was going to open up a can of worms," when he first denied McClenny's request for a free box, Powell said.

McClenny, meanwhile, said he is satisfied with the outcome.  "I think it's a service that we are entitled to," he said.

Reach Kerin Magill at 537-1881, ext. 108, or kmagill@smgpo.gannett.com.