‘We’re never going to get it in the mail slot again.’ A beloved Philly newspaper carrier retires from route

The well-wishers had turned up at the Bagel Place in Philadelphia at 8 a.m., a tender hour for a farewell fete. But for Ed Lind, the guest of honor, it was already a couple of hours past his usual bedtime.

“I was up this morning from 2 to 4, tossing and turning, looking at the clock,” said Lind, chuckling. “I said, ‘It’s 3 o’clock. I should be at work!’”

As he was for the last 42 years, seven days a week, regardless of the weather. Lind, 60, with the support of his wife, Cheryl, 59, was the person generations of households in Queen Village and Society Hill came to count on to deliver their newspaper on time and intact. Some neighborhood night owls said they’ve heard the paper coming through their mail slot — yes, through their mail slot — as early as 2 a.m.

“We’ve basically never not gotten a paper,” said Steve Ramm, a Queen Village resident and retired accountant who organized the bagel breakfast. “Snow day, you name it. It’s there.”

So there were quite a few gasps of disbelief a few weeks ago when Lind’s home delivery customers got a letter from him — atop their daily copies of The Inquirer, Daily News, New York Times, Barron’s, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, or USA Today — informing them he was retiring.

Colleen Puckett, Second Ward leader and former Queen Village Neighbors Association president, said her partner, Rob Klatzkin, a retired accountant, was the first in their home to read Lind’s letter.

“I hear Rob bellowing, ‘No! No!’ I thought one of the cats died,” Puckett said. “I came downstairs, and he showed me the letter. I said, ‘Oh, no!’”

Lind’s last day was Super Bowl Sunday. He’s getting both knees replaced — the first one Feb. 24, the next in a few months — in hopes of walking his daughter down the aisle late this spring.

His customers noted his special touches, such as giving Klatzkin, a business news fan, a free Wall Street Journal when he had an extra. Or taking care to make sure people never missed their papers.

“He’d walk up our three little steps and put the paper in the slot,” Klatzkin said. “With a new person, we’re never going to get it in the slot again. It was really nice.”

Lind said that’s just his way.

“I’m old-school, I guess,” he said. “It’s my work ethic.”

It goes way back.

Lind was not long out of St. John Neumann High School, working as a waiter, when someone he knew was giving up his newspaper delivery route in Queen Village. A South Philly guy, he had thought he would follow his father into the postal service, but he figured he’d give the newspapers a shot.

“I had a small route, and after the small route, I got another route, and the money was decent, so I kept it,” he said.

He was paid by the number of papers he delivered, and he said he also could get monthly bonuses for meeting goals for low customer complaints. Lind said he got those bonuses every month.

His satisfied customers were also very generous at Christmas, as they’ve been since they’ve learned he is retiring. When he got home from his goodbye breakfast, there were six more cards with tokens of customers’ appreciation waiting in his mailbox.

Lind took pride in his work. If the papers were late getting delivered to where he picked them up on Roosevelt Boulevard, he said, he’d get in touch with his wife, herself a former postal carrier, and she’d drive from their Cinnaminson home to help him deliver the papers so they wouldn’t be late.

One of his favorite things about the job, he said, was the exercise.

“I’ll have to watch my weight,” he quipped. “I walk five miles every night.”

Still, it was no picnic. He had health insurance through his wife’s job, and Lind said as an independent contractor he had no paid time off. He said he hadn’t taken a day off in 10 years.

“Back in the day, my two nephews were around, and they used to sub for me, and I used to go to Disney World once in a while. But they went to college and moved on,” he said. Even then, he added, he’d come back a couple of days before his wife and daughter to handle the weekend papers himself. “You work hard on the weekends.”

Now he has plenty to look forward to. First, there’s the big change in hours.

This year, on his last day on the job, he actually watched the whole Super Bowl. Usually, he had to turn in by halftime.

“I never watched shows live. I always taped them,” he said. ”I’m going to enjoy sports. I’m a sports fan.”

He’d like to go back to Jamaica with his wife. That’s where they spent their honeymoon 31 years ago. They met on a blind date, set up by her cousin and a friend of his.

“The reason why he hooked us up is she used to get up at 4 in the morning for the post office, and I used to get up early,” Lind explained. “He said, ‘I know someone who gets up the same hours as you.’”

This May, they’re looking forward to a big wedding celebration for their daughter, Stacey Hoopes. She was married in 2020 during the COVID-19 shutdown, but this spring will be the gala reception with a renewing of the vows and lots of guests.

That’s a main reason Lind is getting that knee replacement now.

“He wants to be able to walk my daughter down the aisle without limping,” Cheryl said. “And be able to dance at the wedding, right, Eddie?”

That’s the retirement plan. He’s still getting the hang of it.

The other night, Lind told his wife, “I should be at work.”

“I’m like, ‘Oh my God,’” Cheryl Lind said. “He misses it. He really does.”

And his customers miss him.

Said Joan Weiner, Inquirer subscriber and Queen Village resident: “It’s the end of an era.”