When someone does their job for 35 years, they must be doing it right.
Sharon Monahan, 18 years old and not sure what she wanted to do with her life, figured delivering the mail for awhile might not be too bad.
Thirty-five years later, Monahan, now 53 and a resident of Drifton, is still delivering the mail. As she looks back on 35 years and what became of her career as a letter carrier, she knows, as the first female letter carrier out of the Hazleton Post Office, how important it was to set a path for other women to follow. Things were a bit different then. It was a predominantly male job as a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier when Monahan began. In fact, she remembers male letter carriers weren’t exactly crazy about working with her.
“I had something to prove because the men didn’t really want a woman working in the post office at the time,” Monahan said.
Things have changed over the years and now she gets along well with her fellow employees — after proving over the years she and other women who have followed can certainly do the same job as men, delivering mail through the rain, sleet and snow.
She advises the younger carriers to use sunscreen. She speaks from experience after developing melanoma, a skin cancer on her leg
Finally after 35 years she gets the recognition she deserves…oh wait, she’s holding mail and not wearing her seatbelt, can you say FIRED???