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 One Beltway Center Members can receive breaking news from LEAGUE Headquarters by signing up for our Broadcast Email service. |
President's MessageDecember 22, 2009 Dear Leaguers, The big day of Christmas is almost upon us! It is a season where several holidays are celebrated, including Hanukah and Kwanzaa and Eid. Whatever your preference, I hope for you that this is a time of happiness and joy for each of you and that you are able to gather your loved ones around you. Here in the north and the east, it can be a good excuse to huddle up and get warm! It has to give you second thoughts, however, about the whole global warming controversy; we just had a record setting snowstorm right here in the Washington DC area! Rather than get involved with that political beach ball, I’ll instead wish each of you a joyous Christmas Day (my tradition) along with all of its blessings! Of course, during these special family times, our thoughts turn to those who are not with us; our friends and family who have passed away whom we’ll deeply miss during this time, and those who are just a long way from home. Forty years ago, this Christmas, I was a 19 year old airman at basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. There we were, I and the 39 other airmen in my flight, far from home during a special family time of year. Almost every one of us was getting melancholy about being away from our families during Christmas, in a strange and not so friendly place. On a day just before Christmas, I received something by airmail (yes, there was something before Priority Mail) from home. The package I received contained a big can of my mom’s homemade chocolate chip cookies and a little fifteen inch high Christmas tree! I doled out the cookies (which were hard to share as they’d always been my favorites) that, though delicious, were soon gone and forgotten. What made a lasting impression was that little plastic Christmas tree. It quickly went from being my tree as I pulled it from its box, to being our tree as I set it upon the TV in our day room. The guys seemed to huddle a little closer around that TV with that little tree sitting upon it, even when the TV was switched off! My mom’s love radiated out from that tree to each airman there. For a week that tree became our symbol of home and all the good things that we had left behind and that we would soon be returning to. So here it is, 40 years later, my son, MSgt. Chuck Mapa, like so many of your sons and daughters, is a long way from home in a strange and not so friendly place. Charlie Jr. is 9 ˝ time zones away in Afghanistan taking care of business. Two weeks ago, I found out that his mom, my wife Gwenda, sent him a flat rate Priority Mail package. In that parcel? You guessed it; cookies and a little plastic Christmas tree with lights! I know that Charlie has shared all the cookies and I’m sure that that little plastic Christmas tree is prominently displayed so that Charlie’s airmen get a little touch of home. I guess the points I’m trying to make are two. First of all, when you cut through all of the commercial parts of this season, you find something very special. The Christmas season is something that draws friends and families together; there is nothing else quite like it during any other time of the year. Secondly, YOU deliver Christmas! Without you and all your postal family delivering Christmas in all those cards and letters, parcels and packages, even to places as far away as Afghanistan, Christmas just would not be the same. Thank you! And for all of you with loved ones far from home, I’ll quote Charles Dickens’ Tiny Tim; “God bless us, every one!” Merry Christmas, Charley Mapa President National League of Postmasters 703-329-4550 |
League EventsJuly 29 - August 2, 2012 National League of Postmasters Convention Walt Disney World Swan Resort 
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