Blast from the Past: Ottawa Post Office receives a much-delayed postcard

Don’t tell Mark Thompson jokes about the U.S. Postal Service being slow or inefficient. The Ottawa postmaster has worked 21 years with the service and takes his duties quite seriously.

Nevertheless, Thompson was at a loss to explain how a postcard that surfaced Aug. 8 in Ottawa for sorting arrived, oh, a tad later than its sender would have reasonably expected. The postcard was mailed to Ottawa from New York City – and postmarked in 1953.

Thompson has seen a few stray pieces of lost or misplaced mail, but never more than two years old – let alone seven decades.

“I’ve been doing this 21 years,” Thompson said, “and I’ve never seen this before.”

Now, Thompson is trying to find the addressee or, as the addressee is likely deceased, some descendant.

The postcard was addressed to the Rev. F.E. Ball and family at a house in the 500 block of Catherine Street in Ottawa. The sender, who simply signed the card “Love to all, Alan,” was visiting the United Nations building in New York (depicted on the front of the postcard) and pledged to write again from P.R., presumably Puerto Rico.

The card may have been spurred by unhappy news. On the card, Alan told Ball he’d received Ball’s telegram while traveling via train and then concluded, “Think all will be OK.”

Whatever the worrying exchange between Alan and the Rev. Ball, the postcard certainly put smiles on the faces of modern-day Ottawa postal employees.

“Oh, they loved it,” Thompson said of the office reaction, though he admits the postcard may cement some prejudices about the U.S. Postal Service. “I mean, how is it going to look that we had something so old?”

Thompson has no way of knowing how the piece went undelivered since Dwight Eisenhower was president, but he suspects the postcard was mishandled after being postmarked in New York City – perhaps at a postal substation at the UN – and slipped between file cabinets or some crevice where it vanished.

“And somebody finally picked it up, inspected it, dusted it off and tried to get it to the rightful owner,” Thompson speculated, pointing out that Ottawa’s ZIP Code was added to the address with a different pen and in obviously different handwriting.

“I’m almost thinking it was the United Nations, because they would have probably had their own little post office there inside,” Thompson speculated. “That’s why they would have (affixed) the postmark.”

Thompson’s challenge now is to find the addressee’s next of kin. He noted that Ottawa Lighthouse Church is located next door to the addressee’s residence. Thompson contacted the church in hopes of getting more information on the former clergyman. Neither Thompson nor Shaw Media immediately received a return call from the church.

Alan probably isn’t around anymore, either; but he can take consolation in the postcard arriving at a decidedly reduced rate. Affixed to the postcard was a 2-cent stamp which, needless to say, would be insufficient postage by today’s standards.