[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Page 14268]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          MORETOWN POST OFFICE

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I would like to bring to the attention of 
the Senate a notable development in the community of Moretown, VT. 
Moretown is located near the confluence of the Mad River and the 
Winooski River, just down the road from my home in Middlesex, and the 
community was hit particularly hard by the flooding caused by Tropical 
Storm Irene. Homes were flooded, the town offices were inundated, and 
the Moretown School was damaged. Bridges were washed away, cutting the 
town off from central Vermont's highway system, and leaving some 
residents stranded. But through this disaster, the town pulled 
together, in yet another of the many stories that can be told of the 
great resilience shown by Vermonters in the storm's terrible aftermath.
  As flood waters rose, the postmaster in charge of the Moretown Post 
Office, Naomi Tilton, and the two carriers who work in the Moretown 
Post Office managed to save every piece of mail from the rising flood 
waters. Every single piece of mail in their charge. Water eventually 
filled the entire post office lobby, and as water damage left by the 
flooding in Moretown demonstrated, as much as 8 feet of water filled 
the first floors of structures surrounding the post office.
  When my staff visited the Moretown Post Office a week later, workers 
had already begun renovating the building. They had shoveled out the 
mud and muck deposited by the river, and they had torn out the mold-
prone sheetrock. Yet even in disrepair, the post office was not in 
disarray or disorder: The Moretown Post Office continued to operate. A 
sign made out of a plain sheet of white paper directed customers to the 
side of the erstwhile post office, up a set of crooked stairs and into 
an office on the second floor. In that makeshift temporary post office, 
customers could still buy stamps, pick up their mail, and share their 
stories of survival and community togetherness.
  The postal employees of Moretown did all this on their own time, 
outside of normal business hours, and on their own initiative. I 
understand that Ms. Tilton's manager was stranded dozens of miles to 
the south in Rochester, VT, a town similarly cut off from the outside 
world. Professionalism and dedication to the community motivated the 
employees of the Moretown Post Office to keep the area's postal system 
working. Their efforts offered a glimmer of hope to their neighbors as 
the community realized the extent of the devastation caused by the 
flood and the tremendous effort it would take to rebuild Moretown. And 
what a powerful testament to the currency in modern times of the proud 
tradition of this Nation's venerable postal system and its dedicated 
public servants.
  The Moretown Post Office is just one story of the hundreds of stories 
I would like to tell to remind everyone how determined we are to 
recover from Tropical Storm Irene. The determination of our Moretown 
postal workers reminds us all of what it means to be a Vermonter and an 
American.

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