Sean C. Morgan
Ruth Powers was voted Most
Likely to Succeed by her high
school classmates.
Forty-
ive years later she
says she didn’t do it the way they
might have expected, but she did
it the way that was important to
her, and that was becoming part
of the community and the friend-
ships she had with the people of
her community.
Powers, 63, who served as
Cascadia’s postmaster for 17
years and Crawfordsville’s post-
master for the last eight months,
after the Cascadia Post Office
burned down last year, retired on
July 31.
She has worked nearly 30
years for the U.S. Postal Service.
“The Post Of
ice has been
very good to me,” Powers said.
She started in Brownsville, work-
ing three hours on Saturdays.
“I learned so much,” she
said. “You learn an awful lot in
the little offices.”
If Cascadia Post Office hadn’t
burned in November, she thinks
she might not have retired at all,
Powers said. Now she’s planning
to spend her time volunteering.
She loves reading to children, so
she wants to volunteer with Kid-
Co Head Start, and she also plans
to get involved with an organiza-
tion like Sweet Home Emergency
Ministries, a local food bank.
“When I was young, in the
neighborhood (in the San Fran-
cisco Bay Area) I was in, if you
didn’t work, you didn’t eat,” Pow-
ers said. “School was our job – It
was to do good in school.”
During high school, Powers
saw a lot of students drop out to
support their younger brothers
and sisters, she said. She was glad
she didn’t have to do that. She
graduated and was supposed to at-
tend college on a scholarship, but
she decided to enter the domes-
tic Peace Corps instead, working
with the Chippewa Tribe in upper
Michigan.
“It was very similar to Sweet
Home,” Powers said. “It had been
a big logging town.”
Afterward, she worked and
attended college off and on, Pow-
ers said, but she didn’t graduate.
She held a string of minimum-
wage jobs. She was making $2 an
hour at a dry cleaner in Eugene.
It was never about the al-
mighty dollar, she said. Whether
working as a dental assistant or
selling “hippie jewelry” on the
streets of Philadelphia, “it was my
job to support myself,” and “I did
a lot of different things because
nobody told me I couldn’t.”
When she started working at
the Post Office though, she knew
she would never leave. It offered
security that minimum- wage jobs
didn’t.
After her start in Browns-
ville, she transferred to Lebanon.
“I was distribution and window
clerk.”
As a part-time flexible clerk,
she subbed at area Post Offices,
she said. “From Lebanon, I heard
that Cascadia was open. I was
already living up on Quartzville
Road, so it was perfect.”
She put her application in
and took a $5,000-per-year pay
cut, Powers said. On the flip side,
it was regular hours and it became
much more.
“It wasn’t a job,” Powers
said. “It was what I did. There
was a time I realized I would do
this even if they didn’t pay me.”
She had to balance doing the
things the Postal Service want-
ed, delivering mail and selling
stamps, and her interest in the
community and the people.
“I enjoy the people,” Pow-
ers said. “They’re what makes it
worthwhile.”
When Cascadia Post Office
burned last year and she trans-
ferred to Crawfordsville, she
found “the wonderful people in
Crawfordsville were very similar.
It’s that small-town feel.”
She counts her time at Casca-
dia as a success, she said. “Yeah,
I sold stamps. Yeah, I did every-
thing the Post Office wanted me
to do. But with a small Post Of-
fice, it was the heart of the com-
munity.”
And she enjoyed being able
to share who she was with a com-
munity, Powers said. At the heart
of the community, she spent a
year or two writing about Casca-
dia for The New Era.
She wanted to be postmaster
in Brownsville, she said. She was
crushed when she didn’t get that
position.
“Then you learn that fate
doesn’t always give you what you
want,” Powers said. In her case,
it gave her Cascadia, and with-
out the fire, she doubts she would
have left, just like Betty Stokes,
80, who was still working at the
Cascadia Post Office as postmas-
ter relief. Stokes worked for three
postmasters and is still on the
books with the Post Office.
“If they do reopen Cascadia,
she’ll be the one there,” Powers
said. “It’s probably really good
that I retire now.”
Crystal Moore of Halsey is
succeeding Powers at Crawfords-
ville. She is serving as officer in
charge, she said. That’s what the
Postal Service is doing with a lot
of the smaller Post Offices.
Moore started working as
postmaster relief in January 2011
when Seandra Reese was post-
master.
Moore, who grew up in the
Spokane, Wash. area, moved to
the Halsey area with her husband,
who is from the local community,
in March 2004. She has a 3-year-
old son.
Her mother-in-law and sister-
in-law are both postal workers,
she said. “It’s kind of in the fam-
ily.”
“I like Crawfordsville since
I’ve worked here for a year and
a half,” Moore said. “I’ve gotten
to know many of the box holders
here. I’m glad to be back. It’s a
quiet, nice community.”