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Local Letters to Santa are pictured at Duquesne Post Office Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2018 in Duquesne.
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The Neighborhood: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus in Duquesne

Lake Fong/Post-Gazette

The Neighborhood: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus in Duquesne

According to the cornerstone in front of the post office in Duquesne, the stately red brick building was dedicated in 1936, making this the 82nd Christmas that the civil servants toiling inside have served this historic-but-on-hard-times Mon Valley community.

But this year is the first in recent memory that neighborhood kids could deliver letters to Santa Claus. Or at least one of his surrogates just down the road in Clairton.

Jo-Ann Crovak took over as acting postmaster in Duquesne in October and while taking stock of the building and its contents, came across an old “Letters to Santa” postal box that had been painted up red for the holidays but hadn’t been used in years.

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“I feel like it was my duty with the children in the area, particularly being a distressed area, that children come in with their letters to Santa,” she said.

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“We collect them every night and then ‘Santa’ sends a response letter back. It’s handwritten and personalized for each child.”

“I felt it was great to have this in the lobby so the kids in the community can see that Santa Claus is real and does exist.”

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In this case, Santa does exist in the form of Ms. Crovak’s colleague at the Clairton post office, Bille Jo Lazzari, who takes the time to answer the letters individually.

Ms. Lazzari is a postal carrier and started about five years ago to answer the letters to Santa from kids on her route.

“When I pick up a letter, it just makes me smile. I feel good,” she said. “Kids grow up way, way, way too fast, so if there are kids out there that still believe in Santa and write a letter, they should get a response.”

She said she answers it the same way anybody might of a letter they receive in the mail — albeit in character.

“Sometimes I make up stories about the elves or reindeer, or Mrs. Claus. It depends on how work was that day or how many letters I get,” she said. “I just kind of go with whatever they write.”

The letters are handwritten in red pen and sent in red envelopes. They are never form letters.

“Everybody else puts out form letters,” she said. “I thought these kids need an answer,” adding that doing so, “helps keep Christmas magic alive.”

Post offices across the region and country routinely participate in various holiday programs, such as postmarking and returning a form letter sent to the North Pole, Alaska or Rudolph, Ohio or Santa Claus, Ind.

“Jo Jo has personalized and revived a program on the local level that is decades old,” Tad Kelley, area spokesman for the United States Postal Service said. 

But the City of Duquesne isn’t a tony suburb where one might take for granted that their Christmas wishes will be answered. It’s the kind of town that’s been waiting for America to be made great again for decades and counting. More than a third of Duquesne’s 5,600 residents live below the poverty line. The population is a quarter of what it was during postwar boom times when the Dorothy 6 blast furnace at the U.S. Steel Duquesne works was the largest in the world. That mill alone employed more people than live there today.

Special education children in kindergarten though the third grade at the nearby Duquesne Elementary School wrote letters, each one more heart tugging than the next.

Their teacher, Jessica Recker, said the kids were in disbelief at the prospect of hearing from Jolly Old St. Nick.

“It was a general excitement first, and when I said they would get responses, they asked ‘from the real Santa?’ ” she laughed. “I said ‘of course, who else would write you back?’ They ask every day ‘when are we getting our letters?’ and I plan on reading them to them when they arrive.”

Ms. Recker said that tablets and Legos were among the most requested items, and the children made assurances that they had been good, and that they might leave cookies and milk out for Santa.

If nothing else, Ms. Crovak hopes that the experience proves to be a pleasant distraction for the kids.

“I believe in the magic of Christmas,” she said. “This is the best time of year.”

Dan Gigler: dgigler@post-gazette.com; Twitter @gigs412

First Published: December 13, 2018, 12:00 p.m.

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Local Letters to Santa are pictured at Duquesne Post Office Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2018 in Duquesne.  (Lake Fong/Post-Gazette)
Local Jo-Ann Crovak, acting postmaster at the Duquesne Post Office, is pictured with the Santa mailbox. Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2018 in Duquesne.  (Lake Fong/Post-Gazette)
Lake Fong/Post-Gazette
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