Going postal

WASHINGTON -- Charles Caplan is little-recalled today, but his vigilance may well symbolize the thousands of postal workers honored in a new exhibit -- "In the Line of Duty: Dangers, Disasters and Good Deeds" -- that opened Wednesday at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum.

It was 1919, a time of national worry about terrorism, with the government rounding up and deporting anarchists suspected of associating with those who had set off bombs in Boston and even on Wall Street, the heart of capitalism.

A mail clerk in New York, Caplan read about a mail bomb that had badly wounded the maid of Georgia Sen. Thomas Hardwick and another discovered in the office of Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson.

The description of the bombs sounded familiar, and Caplan led postal inspectors to intercept more than 30 additional bombs, addressed to people such as the attorney general, postmaster general, Supreme Court justices, John D. Rockefeller and others.

In addition to foiling crime, postal workers over the years have saved people from burning buildings, rescued others from drowning, raised money for charities and helped recover missing children.

"Sometimes in simple ways, sometimes in heroic fashion they help tie together the fabric of this nation," deputy postmaster general John Nolan said in dedicating the new exhibit.

Caplan is recalled with a photo of postal workers in period uniforms. Nearby is a case featuring burned letters that survived a blast set by the Unabomber. Other damaged letters, as well as a mechanical detonator, are from a 1923 train robbery in which the thieves used too much dynamite, completely destroying the mail car and killing a postal worker and three railroad employees.

Also present are the photos of three American and two British postal workers who perished in the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912, struggling to drag 200 bags of mail on deck in hopes of saving it. RMS, by the way, stands for Royal Mail Ship.

Looking for bravery, recall the first airmail pilots in planes of canvas and wood who called themselves the Suicide Club. Even the famed Charles Lindbergh had to bail out twice from planes when he was a mail pilot.

And a large case holds a tired-looking desk topped by a mass of cubbyholes for sorting mail. It's the case from the Church Street Station in New York used by letter carrier Emma Thornton to sort mail for floors 77 through 101 of the World Trade Center, until Sept. 11, 2001. She was scheduled to attend the museum opening but was stuck in New York because of airline problems.

Around the corner from her desk is a large photo of cleanup workers in anti-contamination suits cleaning Washington's anthrax-contaminated Brentwood mail station. Two postal workers died from the disease, others were sickened and thousands were placed on antibiotics to ward off the illness.

At the less dramatic end of the scale the exhibit also honors the effort to recover lost and missing children.

The mail advertising company Advo sends out weekly cards to 85 million homes with photos of missing children under the title "Have You Seen Me?"

To date 130 children have been recovered through the program, Advo chairman Gary Mulloy said. Four of them attended the exhibition opening and cut the ribbon.