Ocracoke post office: Doing whatever it takes  

By Connie Leinbach

In almost four decades on the job on an island accessible only by ferry, Melissa Sharber has been more than just a postal clerk.

She and Postmaster Celeste Brooks and the other clerks are tapped into the pulse of the community.

Brooks recently honored Sharber for her 35 years on the job.

Not only do they and all the clerks field all kinds of questions from visitors and locals, but they also must adapt at a moment’s notice to get and deliver the mail in situations that don’t occur in other communities.

“We go with the flow,” Sharber said during an interview with Brooks. “When the road washes out, we reroute (the mail). Or when the Oregon Inlet bridge got knocked out (during the 2017 power outage) we had to go to Hatteras every day to meet the mail truck.”

Or when Brooks, who’s been the postmaster since 2000, set up mail call at the Ocracoke Volunteer Fire Department right after Hurricane Dorian devastated the island in the fall of 2019 and then brought the mail over from Swan Quarter for three months.

One time in December of 2003, Sharber said, a tornado tore the roof off the building.

“It came in off the ocean,” she said about the tornado. “It sucked out people’s insulation” and then departed via Oyster Creek.

While the building was being repaired, the post office staff doled out the mail from a cell in the Hyde County Sheriff’s Office next door.

“That was ‘the mail in jail,’” Brooks said.

The two know everyone’s mailbox numbers.

“When I roll over at night and look at the clock, I say, ‘Oh, my. That’s somebody’s mailbox number,” Sharber said.

Then there are zip codes.

“She’s so good at zip codes,” Brooks said about Sharber.

“I can probably get you the first three zip codes of almost anywhere in the country,” Sharber said.

On a barrier island 23 miles off the mainland, the two must stay on top of the weather – to determine whether to go pick up the mail or turn it around before bad weather arrives.

Back in December, the mail couldn’t get to Ocracoke for a few days.

“We went to Hatteras one Sunday and got the mail,” Sharber said about her and former postal clerk Dale Mutro, who sometimes fills in. “He and I worked the packages in the passenger lounge (on the ferry). We scanned them and put them back in the bags.”

When they got back on the island, the packages filled eight carts. They made announcements at the island’s churches that the packages were ready.

Brooks said that her bosses in Greensboro don’t always understand life on the island because one of the craziest questions she has gotten was from one of her bosses once when they couldn’t get mail here.

“And he asked me was there not a back road to get the mail here?” Brooks said. “And I said, ‘Have you not Googled where we are? Do we have a boat in our fleet?’”

Once, back in 1989 near Christmas, Sharber said, Ocracoke had a rare snow day. The post office workers in Hatteras put the Ocracoke mail on a ferry.

Then-Postmaster Anita Fletcher drove up to the South Dock to pick it up.

“It took her two hours to get to the ferry because we didn’t have a motor grader or anything and the roads were full of snow,” Sharber said. That was wet snow, which also created ice underneath. “We had, like, eight or nine inches.”

The next day, she, Fletcher and another worker processed the mail and then they delivered the mail to islanders, though that’s a rare thing.

“We delivered after COVID struck,” Brooks said.

Another personal touch is that they always put a post on Facebook saying they will be open only a half day on Christmas Eve and to let them know if someone is expecting a package.

They also know who checks their mailboxes daily.

Back in the 2000s, a widow who had suffered a stroke and couldn’t talk would leave a note at the post office if she was going out of town.

“She walked down here and got her mail every day,” Brooks said, but one time the woman didn’t show up.  Another islander later stopped at the woman’s house but didn’t get an answer.

Sharber knew something wasn’t right because the woman hadn’t picked up her mail nor given them a note.

So, she called Ed Fuller, the NPS supervisor who was then a sheriff deputy, who went to the house and found that the woman had been on the floor for two days. She was alive but if Sharber hadn’t persisted, the outcome might have ended differently.

“I just had a feeling something wasn’t right,” Sharber said.

Because the island has only box delivery, the workers are aware of who picks up their mail every day and whose boxes are overflowing.

“That is a key indicator,” Brooks said. “We tell our customers it’s OK to take a vacation, just let us know so we don’t worry about you.”